Today we set out to complete my list of “foods we need to eat while in Lousiana,” knocking the final entry (Banana’s foster) off the list. We went to Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans around 10:00am (which is the source of the banana’s foster), and ordered coffee and dessert, for breakfast.
Travis got some chocolate [...]

Today we went to the Audubon Nature Institute Aqarium in New Orleans, and later the 3D IMAX Wild Ocean show. There were a ton of children on field trips all wearing matching shirts (purple, lime green and teal groups, at least), and we did our best to avoid them whenever possible.
Today I tried to [...]

Today we woke up bright and early in Baton Rouge (or maybe it wasn’t *that* early) to go take pictures of the capitol building before we headed out to New Orleans. My guidebook had told me that the capitol in Baton Rouge was the tallest in the country — it’s definitely taller than CA [...]

Today we had the long drive in from Dallas, TX to Louisiana. We have plans to be in New Orleans Tuesday and Wednesday night, so today the goal was to get somewhere fairly close to New Orleans so the drive tomorrow will be short and sweet. However, that made today’s drive very long [...]

Got to Houston on Thursday, got $10 tickets for the Dodgers/Astros game. Enjoyed my free hot dog, chips and drink. Wanted to buy popcorn to throw at obnoxious, screaming children. They were really noisy, and kept shouting dumb stuff like “hit it that way” and pointing (we were in the 400s upper [...]

Yesterday (Tuesday) we went to the Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico (we are trying to do the best we can with our National Parks Annual Pass). We got there too late to go in the “natural cave entrance” so instead we got to take the 75 story elevator down to the “big [...]

#1 - Random Sand Dune swirls
#2 - a Yucca plant (I finally learned the name of the plant after I got bored of calling them “stunted palm trees with alien fronds”
#3 - close-up of the Yucca flower/frond
#4 - some sand dune flowers
#5 - little beetle struggling to climb a dune
#6 - some plants in a [...]

We stayed at hotels/motels for the last 2 nights with no internet, and my laptop battery doesn’t have the power to survive massive photo uploads during our lunchtime internet hour (today sitting outside a Days Inn in Carlsbad, NM). So, I guess I shall just babble, and then post pictures later.
So after the gas [...]

Southern New Mexico has been quite a journey so far.
Weirdest place we’ve been so far (this trip): Silver City, New Mexico
In Silver City, the historical district is full of western style buildings and fonts, but mixed with more modern twists here and there. We stayed at the Palace Hotel in the historical district, which [...]

Friday we drove down from Flagstaff, AZ through Sedona, then into Cave Creek/Phoenix, AZ where we spent a few days at my aunt and uncle’s place. Yesterday was mostly our Sedona wanderings, but today we went to the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, as well as the attached Butterfly Pavilion. Both were pretty [...]