We tried to get a picture with everyone before we left.  We succeeded, but it took us a few tries. 

The states we covered were:

North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina

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IKEA - What a fun stop!

We had one other exciting event happen on our way home.  While we were driving near Charlotte, NC in the dark we were passed by a large Bronco that was weaving in and out of traffic (not purposefully).  The driver was obviously drunk and all the cars around him were staying away from him and some even began to put their flashers on.  Dan got off the phone with his parents and immediately called highway patrol.  We were surprised by how quickly they responded, because within minutes the police were coming up behind us and pulled the drunk driver over.  As soon as the police officer flashed his lights and pulled the car over Dan yelled out, “Yeah boy!”

When we drove into our driveway in North Carolina, we couldn’t resist taking a picture of our odometer.  We drove 6,034 miles on our loop out west!

We intended to take the trolley toward the French Quarter for lunch.  However, a misunderstanding of our map sent us the wrong direction on the trolley.  But we didn’t mind — as we got a great sight-seeing tour of the Garden District for the $1.25 trolley fare!

Once we finally made it to the French Quarter, we stopped at a place on the strip for lunch.  We all ordered “local” cuisine such as etouffee, gumbo, and boiled crawfish.   After lunch, we walked through more of the French Quarter,  said our goodbyes with the Norris family, and headed east toward Mississippi.

Thanks to our 2 laned highway adventure we were able to see lots of rice fields along the roads in LA, which neither of us had seen before.  We also ran across some delicious LA cooking!  We stopped in at a fun store and bought what everyone else seemed to be buying – cracklins and boudin.

We arrived to Baton Rouge, LA in the early evening and were greeted warmly by the Norris family (Dan’s cousins).  We were even given a tour of downtown Baton Rouge complete with sushi from a fancy restaurant (even the mayor of Baton Rouge was there)!  We saw several plantations, both the old and new capitol buildings, as well as a gorgeous view from the roof-top sushi restaurant.

After arriving in San Antonio late last night, we got up today ready to see the sights. We started by heading to the Alamo / River Walk area of town. The Alamo stands as a monument to the battle for Texas’ independence from Mexico and Spanish rule and is located in the heart of the most touristy side of downtown. It does look a little odd to have a historical monument of this nature directly across the street from tourist attractions such as “Ripley’s Believe it or Not.” Unfortunately for us, it was spring break and huge crowds of school kids were also at the Alamo.

After spending a while at the Alamo (and realizing how much we have forgotten from our high school history classes), we made our way down the River Walk for an inexpensive lunch in which we split a $5 plate of Chinese food.

Next we headed to another of the San Antonio Missions — Mission San Jose.  Mission San Jose (like the other missions) was essentially a fortified city in which the Spanish settlers offered protection to Native Americans who wanted to join.  In return, the Native Americans had to contribute by working the land or learning another skill which would add to the community.  The Spanish also used the missions as a way to spread both Christianity and Spanish culture to this group of Native Americans and to secure this land from being taken over by other European nations like France.

Oddly enough, we discovered that Mission San Jose is only about 20% original.  The other 80% was rebuilt by the WPA during the depression and the re-builders, not having any information on which to base their guesses, made lots of noticeable mistakes in their recreation.

After visiting Mission San Jose for a few hours, we picked up a few things at Walmart and then got stuck in the worst traffic we have experienced in our two weeks on the road.  After 2 hours of traffic (to go about 30 miles), we eventually made it back to Ward and Nancy’s house where Nancy treated us to a really tasty authentic Thai meal of Pad Thai and Summer Rolls.  Yum yum!

We spent the day “down under” today.  No, not in Australia (that will be in a few months), but down under the ground in Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  We sure are getting good use out of our National Parks Pass.  We chose to take the Natural Entrance which was about a mile hike downhill into the caverns.  We felt like we got a good feel for how far down the caverns are.  Then, we explored the Big Room, the largest cave opening in the western hemisphere – over 350,000 square feet.  We continue to be amazed at what natural wonders lie in our own country.

On a side note, we stopped to look at the stars while driving at night.  We were out in the middle of nowhere driving between towns.  We had never seen so many stars.  In fact, the area was so devoid of light that we could actually see the haze of the Milky Way Galaxy.  We couldn’t capture it with our camera, but it looked something like this (thanks to cgullworld.blogspot.com for the picture).

Milky Way