Day 8
Day 8
We woke up in New Orleans and had a long way to go. Luckily we still had a couple hours in the morning to see New Orleans.
Graveyard
So we went straight to a graveyard.
Ghost of Dan
Lots of graves in disrepair
The graveyard was beautiful. We kept encountering graves with X's drawn on them, which we looked up and seemed to be some sort of voodoo thing. After the graveyard we wandered around the French Quarter, which was SO COOL. Melon tried to catch some (wild?) parrots and we got the loosest sense of the place. We'd love to go back and spend some more time. It felt very strange having been in Santa Fe just a couple days prior. It made the country feel very big.
We didn't find the drive-through daiquiri place we'd been promised, but ran out of time so we started the long drive to Atlanta, getting in late.
Day 9
Day 9
Genuine stock photo
Asheville is a really cool little town. We'd been recommended to go to some breweries and check out some stores but unfortunately, nothing was really open before 4pm. The weather was overcast and the majority of the quiet but cool mountain town seemed very young (which made me formulate a town-of-vampires theory pretty fast, until the sun came out).
This passage from wikipedia explains better than I possibly could:
"Asheville pops up on national rankings for a variety of things: "a New Age Mecca" (CBS News' Eye On America, 1996),[26] the "New Freak Capital of the U.S." (Rolling Stone, 2000), one of "The 50 Most Alive Places To Be" (Modern Maturity, 2000),[27] the "Happiest City for Women" (Self, 2002),[28] one of the "Best Places to Reinvent Your Life" (AARP Magazine, 2003),[29] one the "Best Outside Towns" (Outside Magazine, 2006),[30]one of the "Top Seven Places to Live in the U.S." (Frommer's, 2007),[31] one of the “10 Most Beautiful Places in America" (Good Morning America, 2011),[32] and one of the "25 Best Places for Business and Careers" (Forbes, 2012). Asheville has been listed as one of the "Top 25 Small Cities for Art" in AmericanStyle magazine's annual list from 2000-2012[33] and has reigned the champion "Beer City USA" each year from 2009-2012.
In his 2008 book, The Geography of Bliss, author Eric Weiner cited Asheville as one of the happiest places in the United States."
Possibly written by the Asheville city council.
We left Asheville and got to our motel in the next destination, this one chosen by Brendan. Roanoke VA.
Day 10
Last day
You may be asking yourself, "Brendan, aside from Roanoke being right in between Washington DC (our next destination) and Asheville NC, why choose to go there?" The answer, dear reader, is simple. I thought Roanoke VA was actually Roanoke Colony, one of the original colonies that completely disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Virginia used to be a lot bigger, so turns out the Roanoke colony is actually in North Carolina anyway. So instead I took us to a railroad town. And we could have stayed the night in Asheville.
We got underway, and about 3 1/2 hours into our drive we arrived in Washington D.C.
Walking to the Jefferson Memorial
Except we totally went to the White House
Not a stock photo. I TOOK THIS
We missed the Lincoln Memorial and Congress. We caught the FDR memorial where one of his statues had a golden finger. If anyone knows anything about why that is, we would really love to be educated, because it was very confusing.
King Midas
And his dog
And our dog
And a photo dump!
MLK memorial
We got back to the car to find a MASSIVE PARKING TICKET. Turns out the parking spots turn in to driving lanes after 4pm. Looks like we arrived before the tow truck did though, so we considered ourselves lucky.
We got in to New Jersey that night and immediately started introducing Melon to Rio (Ashley's dog at home). It took the better part of the night to get them to not try and kill each other but now they're doing great and we feel a little aimless.
New York some time soon (I've never been!) and there will be one last photo dump. 10 day road trip complete.
-Brendan
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