Top things to do in St. John (in no particular order)

1. Kayak at Caneel Bay
2. Get a massage in your own private cabana overlooking the beach
3. Apply sunscreen religiously and bathe in the sun for hours.
4. Take a Bad Kitty tour to the British Virgin Islands. Snorkle and see the baths. Drink multiple pain killers to and fro.
5. Eat At Zoso's
6. Drink iguana coladas
7. Have a couple of tacos at the Surly Cantina
8. Take pictures at Turtle Bay
9. Take a hike at Virgin Islands National Park

Food and drink

Laura had this drink on several occasions. It's called an iguana colada. Damn, it was good.


For the most part, the food was mediocre. But as the locals say, you don't come to St. John for the food. We ate a lot of caesar salads for some reason. Most of them were passable. Here's one. A little wilted and heavy on the dressing, huh?


Here's what a $35 entree looks like in St. Thomas. As Laura said, "it tastes frozen." Sho nuff.


This flounder dish looks pretty good, doesn't it? Well, looks can be deceiving.

Some pictures from St. Thomas

I have to share this picture of the Virgin Islands Department of Education. Man, that's sad. This is "duty free" in a nut-shell.



If the libertarians (and many conservatives) had their way, that's what ours would look like in the U.S.A. Just a block away, the Virgin Islands Legislature was in tip-top shape with flowers blooming and a new paint job. Big surprise. By the way, a taxi ride up the hill costs about $15 in St. Thomas. It seems to be the only way for regular folks to make any money on the island. Maybe the legislature should pass a law or two lowering taxi fares, and some of these people living hand to mouth hauling tourists around should consider a few correspondence courses. Get outta the revolving rut.

Some more pictures of urban blight.




It wasn't all doom and gloom, though. Here's a picture of the new library and archives. Pretty nice, huh? They're still renovating, so we couldn't go inside.

Honeymoon views

The views from our three hotel rooms

Coconut Coast -Understated, affordable, in St. John

Caneel Bay - Freakin' sweet yo. The room was amazing, too.

Mafolie Hotel - Thankfully we only stayed for one night. St. Thomas is a really depressing place. Run-down buildings, people hawking expensive jewelry, just waiting for the next cruise ship to come through. The view was the only positive aspect of the hotel.

Caneel Bay, St. John

For the next three days, we stayed at the resort on St. John. It was amazing. They upgraded us to a beachfront room five steps from the beach. We kayaked, snorkled, played tennis, played a little ping pong, read books, grooved to the ipod, got massages etc. etc. We lived the life of the rich and famous. Here are some pictures.

St. John, U.S.V.I.

We stayed close to town for the first three days of our honeymoon. We ate at a great restaurant called Zoso's. Italian food. We forgot to take a picture of the food, though. Trust us, it looked good and tasted good.

We took a day trip to the British Virgin Islands. We sunbathed at the beach. We snorkled.


We toured the ancient rock formations called the baths.

The water was gorgeous.


We had an awesome view from our room. We could hear the waves crashing as we slept.

House Party!

July 25 - A rather important day in the life of Kevin and Laura. The night before we had a party at the house. It rocked. Here's a picture of a few of the remnants.

Las Vegas

July 19




A-lex and I went to Las Vegas for John and Joyce's wedding. Now, I understand why people go to Vegas. I think I got about 6-7 hours of sleep the entire weekend. I ate and drank well.

Chicago wedding

July 12

We went to Brett and Marv's wedding in Chicago. We had a splendid time. I think we can officially consider ourselves CTA experts.

1. We saw the White Sox play the Indians.
2. We went to the Apollo Theater in Lincoln Park and saw "The Million Dollar Quartet" (the tickets were approximately a million dollars). The play/musical was about the impromptu jam session between Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis. They also told the story of the man who brought them together, the legendary Sam Phillips. The music was amazing. The cast was kinetic.
3. We ate delicious pizza and hot dogs.
4. We danced the night away.
5. We drank several ice cold Busch Lights.

Some final statistics

Miles: 8,790 miles
Cheapest Gas: $3.88 in Crowley, Louisiana
Most Expensive Gas: $4.75 in Glacier Nat'l Park in Montana
Went to 3 baseball games
Paid $80 for the park pass, saved about $65 bucks with the annual pass
Only left one pair of flip flops and a memory card reader in hotel rooms
Lost one hubcap

Back Home

On my way back to Atlanta last night, I was greeted by the one of the best announcers in baseball, the Braves' Pete Van Wieren. That guy's got encyclopedic knowledge of baseball and great wit to boot. Here's a joke he told during the broadcast:

A new general manager is talking to the previous GM of the organization. The previous GM says, "Take these four envelopes. Open one each time you can't think of something to say to the press." About half-way through the first season, the team is 8 games out of 1st place. The GM decides to open the first envelope. It says, "Blame the problems with the team on the previous administration." The GM tells the press exactly that, and it seems to appease the press a bit. At the end of the season, the team is still struggling and end the season 12 games out. He opens the second envelope. It reads, "Blame the team's performance on bad scouting." The GM does just that, and it works. About half-way through the GM's second season, the team is once again struggling and 10 games out of first. The GM opens the third envelope. The envelope says, "Fire your manager and coaches." The GM does what the envelope says and fires the manager and coaches. The press is happy with the decision. This doesn't seem to help, though, and at the end of the second season the team ends the season 12 games out of first place. The GM is dumbfounded, so he opens the fourth envelope. It reads, "Prepare four envelopes."

I spent yesterday afternoon in New Orleans. Per Rooster's instructions, I went to Napoleon House and had a sazerac and a muffaletta. For those who haven't had one before, a muffaletta is a sandwich with salami, ham, provolone, and mozzarella cheese. What makes it so good is the green olives and celery inside the sandwich. They serve it nice and hot at Napoleon House. The Sazerac had a flavorful kick to it with plenty of alcohol. Quite tasty as well.

I spent a couple of hours wondering downtown checking out museums, bookstores, and such. I thought Jackson Square summed up New Orleans. They have a statue of probably the most brashly "American" president we've ever had, Andrew Jackson, who was determined to add Louisiana as a state and to "Americanize" Louisiana, with the the St. Louis Cathedral looming over his statue. I have a funny feeling that Jackson wouldn't have approved of the statue's placement at the knees of New Orleans's biggest Catholic Church.

There's a statue of Ignatious J. Reilly, the main character from the funniest book ever, A Confederacy of Dunces, a block from Bourbon Street. Some may remember the Lucky Dog Hot Dog stand from A Confederacy of Dunces. They're still around, too, but inflation has taken its toll. It $5.25 a dog!

New Orleans and the Vicinity

I can't believe it took me 30 years to finally make it to New Orleans. This place is awesome --great food, great history, great music, with a decent amount of debauchery thrown in for good measure. I'm staying at a hotel only a couple of blocks from the French Quarter. This evening, I went down there to find seafood and beer. Needless to say, they had plenty of both. I first tried Felix's for food, a place I'd heard of before, but they weren't taking Visa or Mastercard, so I went to the nearest restaurant across the street called Bourbon House. It was a little expensive, but the shrimp Creole was damn good.


This afternoon, I toured two plantation homes on the banks of the Mississippi about 30 miles west of New Orleans --Oak Alley Plantation and Laura Plantation. The trees are wonderful at the Oak Alley Plantation, hence the name, but the tour is a bit too short and not all that informative. The tour at Laura Plantation, however, was great. The guide went into great detail about the Creole family who ran and lived at the plantation (and owned and lived in as many as seven buildings in the French Quarter!). If I could go back in time, it sure would be nice to come back as a part of the French Creole elite in New Orleans. They really knew how to live it up.
Oak Alley Plantation

Laura Plantation

You can see the water line from Hurricane Katrina on this clock from the one of the rooms in Laura Plantation.

Austin, TX

As the reigning trivia champ of Rooster's Texas Independance Day Celebration, I considered it my duty to spend most of the day checking out history stuff in Austin.

1. I watched an IMAX movie called "Texas: the Big Story" at the Texas History Museum. I knew it was going to be good when the opening montage included Lyle Lovett's "That's right you're not from Texas, but Texas wants you anyway." Every state should create a cool IMAX movie like Texas, but then again every state ain't like Texas.

2. I toured the history museum for about two hours. It's big --three floors with the early history of Texas on the bottom floor, the fight for Independence to the 1920s on the middle floor, and the 1920s to the present on the top floor. The information about the fight for Independence and the problems afterwards was the best part. If I could go back in time and pit a fist fight between Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar, that would be a real humdinger. Those two couldn't agree on anything. And in most cases, I think Sam Houston had the right idea over Lamar. I also liked the information on the oil industry. I learned all about the gusher at Spindletop (it happened in 1901 and dramatically changed Texas) and who a wildcatter, a boll weevil, a roughneck, and a roustabout are in Texas lingo. If you ask me nicely, I might divulge what I learned.

3. I checked out the Texas State Capital. It's taller than the nation's Capital and about as cool looking on the inside.

4. For vittles, I ate at Ironworks in downtown Austin. The sign read "official Texas Barbeque," so that got my hopes up. I had a sliced beef sandwich with pickles and onions (I've never tried BBQ with onions before). It was okay, but not as succulent as the BBQ can be at Daddy Dz in Atlanta. After lunch, I got dessert at Whole Foods. The headquarters are located in Austin and they have a grocery store nearby. It's huge --about the size of a Walmart, filled with all kinds of awesome food. They even had gelato. I ate some peanut butter gelato in honor of Laura.

5. I went to the LBJ library and museum on the University of Texas campus. I know these museums are supposed to leave you with a fuzzy feeling about the president, but it never ceases to amaze me how much it always does. The Vietnam issue was a real debacle, but like no other president since, domestically Johnson really carried on the values of FDR. LBJ stuck to his guns with his "Great Society" initiative and got programs that are still important today like Medicare, Medicaid, the Job Corps, Headstart, and voting rights passed. The museum also has a talking, lifesize replica of LBJ that tells jokes. Here's a couple:

A boy writes a letter to God asking for $100 to help his poor family. It ends up on the Postmaster General's desk. The Postmaster feels touched and ends up sending the boy $20. The PG gets another letter a couple of weeks later. The boy writes back to God, "God, please send more money. The government must've taken out 80% of what you sent me in taxes."

A man complains to his doctor that he's been having trouble hearing. The doctor says, "If you wanna hear better, you gotta stop drinking." A couple of months later, the man comes back to the doctor. The doctor asks, "Have you stopped drinkin'?" The man thinks for a second, then says, "I've decided I like what I'm drinkin' more than what I'm hearin'."

Heh. Heh.

Austin and the surrounding area was awesome, and I can't wait to go back. I gotta eat some more Texas BBQ, go to Luckenbach, go to Greune Hall, go to LBJ's ranch, check out San Antonio and the Alamo, see a favorite band on 6th street, etc. etc. Until then, I'll just have to listen to the coolest radio station ever, Austin's KUT 90.5 on the internet. I wish WABE 90.1 in Atlanta was half as cool.

Texas

Driving through Texas today, I had a few thoughts running through my head. First, the obvious one --this state is huge and really spread out. You can drive for hours on farm roads and ranch roads and see nothing but grass, cows, and dirt for miles. Then, from the northwest, you start seeing the nice hill country of East Texas and then some terrible traffic to come soon after. Second, just about everyone drives a pickup truck or an SUV around here, much more than in Georgia (I wonder how they pay the bills with gas over $4 just about everywhere in Texas). Third, people in Texas like their country music a little different, but not by much. You hear your typical Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley song, but then you'll stumbled on stations that play Texas country, sort of. They brand themselves as all about Willie, Robert Earl, and Jerry Jeff and will throw in their music every once in awhile, but all the other songs are just a short jaunt from Nashville country pop with references in the songs to Robert Earl, Willie, and Jerry Jeff thrown in for good measure. I guess it won't pay the bills to put people like REK and Jerry Jeff on repeat, so they instead hit you with watered down versions of Texas music with people like Pat Green and Jack Ingram. It ain't bad when you're just surfing the radio dial, it just ain't so great. Last, the exit and entry ramps in Texas are wack. You almost always enter the interstate from the left lane and the access roads can be like three or four lanes long and run along the highway. It's kinda dangerous and confusing for non-Texans (I bet that's how they like it, though).

I drove through Dallas today and stopped at the Texas School Book Depository. I spent about three hours at the really informative museum there --it goes into minute detail about every aspect of the JFK assassination. You see exactly where Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots (it was on the floor with the window open in the picture), learn a little about the conspiracy theories (all hogwash, I think), and even see some rather graphic home video of the assassination. For someone who wasn't alive when it happened, this museum really takes you to that time and place.

Route 66

I spent about two hours today off and on Route 66. The best part of the drive is all the old roadside signs along the way. It's too bad many of these places closed down long ago, but the signs do make for cool pictures.






In Amarillo, I bypassed the famous 72 ounce steak at The Big Texan Steak Ranch and instead ate at the Caleco County Restaurant --great homecooking with tasty bread to start things off. It's the first black eyed peas and collards I've seen on a menu since I headed north from Georgia!

4th of July

Santa Fe is an artsy, eclectic town filled with lots of people our parents' age. The town is one of the oldest capitals (founded in 1610) and the buildings are all built in the Adobe Pueblo style. There are lots of arts shops and Mexican restaurants. Today in downtown Santa Fe was the 4th of July "Pancakes in the Plaza" Celebration. We skipped the pancakes, but it meant there was lots going on including art vendors, music, and a vintage car show. The cars were awesome and now Kevin is ready to purchase his dream classic car at some point in his life. Check out these pictures of our favorite cars.





We ate lunch at The Shed. This restaurant has been a local favorite since the 50s. It was the most spicy Mexican food we have had and was the best yet. The corn-looking side in the picture is called "posole" -- it's hominy with garbanzo beans and spicy seasonings.


Afterwards we went to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum where we got to take in her paintings and Ansel Adams photography. It was neat to see more than her well-known flower work and to learn more about her friendship with Ansel Adams. Adams's photography is amazing and it is neat to the see them capture the same scenes in their chosen medium.

We capped off the 4th of July in Albuquerque at the sold-out (15,000 people were there) Albuquerque Isotopes minor league baseball game. It's a really nice, new stadium with all the typical songs, games, and other distractions. We had great seats just behind the home dugout right past the net behind home plate for only $13 a piece. The Albuquerque Isotopes have a great name and mascot. They ended up losing to the New Orleans Zephyrs, but the fireworks were great.

I'm off to Atlanta tomorrow, so keep Kevin company as you follow him on the blog.