New Orleans, LA

June 19, 2008 Chris 3 Comments

We made it to New Orleans!!! On the drive in we saw that there were still a LOT of fema trailers and destroyed houses everywhere. After reading reviews of the RV parks that are still open and calling a few hotels, we decided to stay in this gangsta rv place a block from the French Quarter. It has a pool/hot tub and it probably nicer than any hotel we could afford. Although it is pricey at $62.00 a night to stay here, (with my AAA discount) is is definitely worth it to be safe. All of the other cheaper parks were in very bad areas and full of FEMA still.(not really my style) Here there is is some extreme barbed wire that goes around the top of the fence and security controlled gate entrances. Well we are going to go to the pool before we shower up, eat dinner, and head out to Bourbon Street for the night.

Well we had A LOT of fun last night. We showered up in our RV parks super nice bathrooms (seriously this is nicer than staying at a resort) and got the security guard to drive us past the movie sets (they are filming two movies nearby). We were dropped off literally a block from the French Quarter. Chris has never been to New Orleans and I have been here twice, although never when I was of age to to go out and have fun. We ate dinner at Johnny White’s on the upstairs balcony literally overlooking Bourbon Street. Dinner was really good and not too expensive. We ordered fun drinks and ate for right around $50 dollars.

After Dinner, we hit the streets. Instead of going into all the bars and clubs, we would just get drinks and walk around (drinks like the cool hand grenades seen above). The street is closed down so you can walk up and down, watching all the crazies around you. All of the souvenir shops are also open so we looked through all the fun merchandise with drinks in hand. One thing that I didn’t remember was how many strip clubs there were (There is even a strip club filled with Trannies!!!). Overall, it was such a great night that we decided to stay another night.

One thing that Chris and I love about this city is that the cops are really friendly and actually there to keep people safe. The police station is right down the street from us and on our walk back to the RV park, the friendly security guard that dropped us off, came back and picked us up from the end of the street. On Bourbon Street, there was a Cop Van sitting there in one of the intersections and all of the people that they arrested from the night were thrown into the van until the bars closed. Two guys were even handcuffed to each other.

Well today is going to be our sightseeing day. Of course Chris had to put in a few hours of work in the morning but now we are going to head to the pool and eat the FREE STEAKS that the RV park is giving us for lunch (they look and smell really good too :)) Hopefully we will made it to Riverwalk, the Flea Market, and some of the other places around town before we go out tonight!!

UPDATE from Friday

Chris and I headed out on Friday and one of us (ahem not me) wasn’t feeling too well since he is old and can’t handle New Orleans like I can…haha I am totally kidding. Well we had our steaks and fully catered lunch which was AMAZING. It was acutally a FQRV police appreciation lunch, which was fine with us since we already thought to cops there were really cool. We ate poolside and then started off walking for the day.

First we went and walked the French Market. We were not really impressed because it was basically all of the stuff we had previously seen in the gifts shops the night before for like a dollar less. We were hoping there would be more local and original items there. The market just opened back up so it was only half full with vendors. We looked at some of the stores around there and bought a really cool bumper sticker for our rv. It says “Don’t tailgate me, I’ll flick a booger on your windshield.” You would be amazed at how many people just creep up right behind you just to fly right around. Future note to all of you: Be VERY courteous to RV drivers, it is not an easy thing to drive.

While we were shopping, Chris found this miller lite hat with a bottle opener built into it that he fell in love with, and decided not to buy. About ten minutes later he was already on ebay looking it up. After the French Market we went to Cafe Du Monde to get our famous beignets (which were deeelliiciouus).

We kept walking along the river until we passed by the IMAX theatre. We decided to go see a movie and rest up before our walk back to FQRV. We watched Hurricanes, which we thought would be about Katrina. Instead it was more of a wetlands conservation movie with a few news clips from the hurricane. It was really interesting to see (the wetlands really are disapearing because of many man made things like canals, boatways, and leveys that are contaminating the freshwater and promoting erosion.)

Now the real story lies with Chris trying to get some popcorn about ten minutes before the movie starts. He really wanted popcorn so we stood in line for concessions and they served everyone up until the person in front of us and then this woman said “Sorry we are closed.” She proceeded to start to pack everything up and there is a huge line of furious customers waiting. We though it was crazy that a concession stand would close before the movie even started?!?! Chris stood there and tried to convince her not to throw away the popcorn and to just sell it to him, along with a few other people. I went off to try and find a manager and by the time I came back with the upstairs manager saying we wanted to file a formal complaint, Chris and this other guy were FINALLY given their popcorn, for $4.00. By this time the movie had started and we had to try to find seats in a packed theater in the dark (for those of you that have never been to an IMAX they are really dark and I am very clumsy).

After the movie we walked back, jumped in the pool for a little while, and then my good friend Tim Furffy came over to visit our RV and go out for the night with us. I met Tim before classes even started our freshman year and he was part of our Clemson Family. He took us out to get some yummy jambalaya. Chris ordered muffaletta, which was a HUGE sandwich that he couldn’t finish. He decided that he would wrap half the sandwich up in a napkin and carry it around with him for the rest of the night in case he got hungry.

After dinner we went to a few bars on Bourbon Street with Tim. We spent most our time in the Cats Meow watching karaoke, hanging out on the balcony (where we saw a guy almost get his head taken off by a falling beer bottle) and basically just people watched (guy in striped shirt hit on this girl and her friend all night). We walked the streets and took pictures with the Police Officers on horses (they were basically a tourist attraction).

Overall, New Orleans was soooo much fun. We did some laundry before we left FQRV and as soon as I had it all dry and folded, it started POURING down rain… Luckily they let us stay a little while past our checkout to finish packing up so we can continue our LONG drive through Texas. I was so happy I got to see Tim and finally experience New Orleans as a 21 year old!!

Check out our pictures from New Orleans here:

Life

Flashback to April

June 19, 2008 Chris 2 Comments

Shout out to our Kuhsie Duck!!!

When Chris, Kathy, Dennis and I went to the white water center in April to watch the Olympic trials, we didn’t know our little ducking would draw so much attention. Thanks to a Miss Sarah, the article was finally brought to our attention. Our duck is full grown now and living at her pond in Spartanburg for the summer while we are gone.

http://dogreporter.blogspot.com/2008/04/whitewater-center-olympic-trials.html

“Okay, okay … I’m a dog reporter and I thought I was done for the day but then I saw these people walking their … er … duck.

Chris Osborne (left) of Spartanburg, SC and Marisa Serrat of Cleveland, Ohio met at Clemson University and fell in love. Naturally, the next step was to adopt a duckling!

Kuhsie, a magpie duck, goes everywhere with the couple – including kayaking. Kuhsie will weigh four pounds when she is full grown and have black and white spots. (Kuhsie is German for she cow. )”

Cross Country Trip, Travel

Dauphin Island, AL

June 18, 2008 Chris Leave a comment

We made it to dauphin island. we got the lady at the rv park to wait for us a half hour after they closed. the springs proved to be a great $454 investment. the campground where we are was crazy hard to find online. it is literally on the beach with trails through a bird sanctuary. The only problem with the island is everything closes at 9 or earlier. We drove around aimlessly at 930 until we finally decided to pull over a cop and ask him. coincidentally his name was officer triple A. sike! I don’t know his name but he sent us to a bar for a liquid dinner. we’re staying another night here so we will have all day on the beach tomorrow which is awesome because so far this isn’t very relaxing. keepin it real …posting from the bar -chris

Touring Dauphin Island

We finally made it to the beach!!! We got in last night and Chris already wrote about the cool bar we went to. Since no place was open to eat, we made my parents favorite road trip meal; spaghetti with little pepperonis in it.

The place we are staying in is Right on the beach. There is a boardwalk that leads to a private beach and marshy area. We walked the beach and build cool sandcastles during the day and then Chris beat another level in Grand Theft Auto 4.

After a little sunburn and all that excitement, we took the dirt bike to go get Chris some local seafood (since I don’t like seafood, I got a hamburger) We ate right on the water at the Crab Shack. I went upstairs to get margaritas from the bar up there and guess how much our two drinks cost….$18.00!!! We got to watch the sunset and then rode around the Island. We realized how much damage Katrina did 3 years ago and half of the Island looks like it is either for sale or empty real estate.

Overall, Dauphin Island was really pretty and we enjoyed it here. It still looks underdeveloped so if anyone want to rent a huge beach house for cheap….go here. It’s about 9:00 now and we are just going to lay low and probably walk on the beach and have a fire outside later before we head to NEW ORLEANS tomorrow. Luckily, it’s a short drive. We are learning a lot about how these campgrounds work and how to reserve the best ones, hopefully we will start finding cheaper ones.

Costs for the Day– $72 two night stay at Dauphin Island Rv Park, $35 seafood dinner, $18 for 2 margaritas

View all of our Dauphin Island Picture Here:

Cross Country Trip, Travel

Montgomery, Alabama

June 17, 2008 Chris 1 Comment

“Sweet Home Alabama”

We finally made it to a new state!! We left Clemson this morning and did some errands before we started driving. We took 85 South through Georgia and drove 284 miles into Alabama for the night. We are only about 150 miles from the beach but we are hoping to still get the springs rebuilt in Montgomery.

For those of you who don’t know, Montgomery is the state capital of Alabama. Montgomery is also the capital and the birthplace of the Confederate States of America. The Confederate flag was designed and first flown in Alabama in 1861. Jefferson Davis began the civil war in Montgomery by giving the orders to fire on Fort Sumter. It is known for large plantations, quaint living, and heavy accents; aka we are really entering the Deep South full of Alabamians (yes that is actually the appropriate word to describe people from Alabama.

So hopefully tomorrow we can start taking some pictures to show everyone. Our goal is to spend the afternoon in Montgomery and then head to the BEACH in Mobile for some much needed R & R.

Costs for the day- $115 gas, $50 new dirt bike tire, $12 Chick-Fil-A dinner, and hopefully $17 to park and plug in for the night.

Chris and I are both very happy to finally be on the road and we are now in the Central Time Zone. Those of you who know us well, realize that this is much more conducive to our sleeping patterns. Much love, Adios!!!

Touring Montgomery, AL

On Tuesday morning, we woke up from our first night of staying in a campground/RV park. I sweet talked the 95 year old man that ran the place into giving us a 20% discount making our stay cost right around $26 dollars. I went for a run and to look around while Chris ran Illstreet from the RV. The place we stayed was called Capital City RV Park. It was very clean and secluded, not too crowded either. There was also a pond nearby and a swimming pool. After we packed up, we headed over to the spring place and then took the dirt bike into Montgomery.

The sweet old man from the rv park told us to go to the visitors center for information and to catch the trolley. For $1 per person, you got to ride 2 different trolleys that had 20 minute routes that took you to all the sightseeing in the city. Chris and I lived up to our post-college graduate status and dug out $2 in pocket change (we aren’t used to having to carry cash yet, we literally used pennies).

We rode the trolley and by this point, we were starving. Every restaurant that we could see was closed, so we asked the trolley driver if anything was open and he said he would take us to a nice hot dog/hamburger joint. He drives out of his route to drop us off at Chris’ Hot Dog Stand, in honor of Chris of course. After going in we realized that the hot dog stand opened in 1920 and they had to turn it into a restaurant because it was so good that it blocked up traffic. Well Chris and I tried both the hot dogs and hamburgers with the secret chili sauce and it was AWESOME.

Overall, Montgomery was “eh” in our opinion. There was NO one there. Literally half of the real estate was empty and no one was to be seen in the streets. We feel like we saw everything there was to see there in 3 or 4 hours.

Cross Country Trip, Travel

We finally left

June 13, 2008 Chris 3 Comments

Hey everyone, last night our journey finally began after 3 long months of hard work, noise and mess. (Shout out to Kathy, Dennis and Kellie for allowing all that to happen!! Thanks again guys) Although we only made it about an hour down the road to Clemson for the night, we are packed and ready to head out tonight (maybe). We bought our first $75 dollar tank of gas (we realized that most gas pumps will not let you charge more than that in one purchase) and filled up our spare 5 gallon tank (since the gas gauge on our cool ride doesn’t really work). We also had to go get four new tires for the back thanks to some lovely dry rot that occurred during the restoration. We cracked open a bottle of champagne on the front (yes we know it is not a boat but it was still really cool) and backed down the driveway only to realize that I had left my camera at the house. Thankfully the whole Osborne/Zellner clan met us up at Ingles so we didn’t have to turn around our house.

The driving went well last night; Chris drove the first 45 minutes of our trip and I finally got a chance to drive the rv for the first time during the last 20 mile stretch to Clemson. I am sure my family is shocked considering that I would never even drive our old conversion van because it was too big. Even though Chris already changed the shocks, he still wants to try and make the rv wiggle less (I don’t know the technical term) when trucks pass us or the wind blows. Chris just went to the Advance Auto in Clemson and they couldn’t get the spring we need until tomorrow so we have been calling at least ten other places to see if anyone has something in stock. If he can get the springs, then we will leave here the second he is done installing them.

We have almost exactly six weeks now to complete our trip before we have to be back in Clemson to move out and before law school begins for me. I hope everyone can send us a few prayers so we:

a. Don’t break down

b. Don’t run out of gas (remeber, gas gage doesn’t work)

c. Don’t get a speeding ticket (which at this point is pretty impossible since we haven’t taken the rv over 55 yet)

d. Have a safe trip with no sickness or injury

We will try to keep up to date with the posting and pictures as much as possible. Please leave us comments and feedback, we would love to hear from you all on the way!!

Ps. Kellie try not to make fun of my spelling and grammatical errors because it is the summer, I am on vacation, and I have not yet figured out where the spell check is on this thing 🙂

Cross Country Trip, Travel

We Finally Started to Plan our Trip!

June 2, 2008 Chris 3 Comments

As of today, we actually sat down, after being inspired by the travel channel, and began to plan our route. The RV is started to look finished so we figured that it was about time to choose destinations. Thanks to AAA internet trip tix our main destinations will be:

Click here for a PDF of our path across the country