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Today is our first properly long day on the road. We are driving from Orlando to New Orleans for Mardi Gras!
That’s about 650 miles.
We are up and out on schedule despite Hayley’s ongoing mystery illness.
She decides to drive the first leg of the journey to keep her mind occupied.
We leave at six in the morning and arrive twelve hours later at five in the afternoon.
(No, my math isn’t off, we are crossing time zones today!).
Filling up Scooby Doo with gas she drives for 2 ½ hours until stopping at an ihop in Lake City.
Ironically by this point I now feel sick and Hayley feels much better. Damn travel sickness. So I just eat toast and miss out on pancakes sadly.
I take over the driving after breakfast and last about two hours before needing to stop again. And the day continues like this. Hayley and I swapping over every couple of hours, plus one picnic stop at the Alabama Welcome Center.
Welcome to NOLA
We arrive in New Orleans right on schedule!
There are some epic bridges you have to drive over to get into the city. They look like rollercoasters as you approach as you can’t see over the peak until you reach the highest point! Never seen anything like it!! I think Hayley was a bit freaked out by them to be honest. But she made it over them all and into the heart of the city!
Living the local life
Now I won’t lie to you, staying in New Orleans during Mardi Gras ain’t cheap!
Hotels and Airbnb’s are booked up well in advance and at premium rates. I managed to get us a little house through Vbro which between six of us came to an affordable price.
Bit be under no illusions, this is a cosy arrangement.
Alex and Pete share the main bedroom, whilst Ruth and Hayley have single beds in the space between the kitchen and bathroom. I nab a double bed in a portioned off part of the lounge, and Jake gets the couch in the other section of the room.
But for £25 each a night during the busiest week of the year, I think we’ve got a good deal!
Our home for the week is really easy to find happily. It’s right off the i10 and only three blocks from the city.
When we pull up outside our hosts Isaac and Dorrianne are waiting for us.
They are such lovely, amazing, welcoming people. They have filled up our fridge with essentials, including champagne, and give us lots of tips about the area and Mardi Gras.
We feel right at home, and I’m so happy our Mardi Gras experience will have a local feel.
The only downside is there is no wifi, so we are learning to live like its 1989 again.
After a long day of driving we settle in to await Jake and Pete who are flying in from the UK. They join us around 7:30pm, and our Mardi Gras gang is complete!
We are all very tired from our long journeys so we order in pizza and get an early night! Such party animals we are.
Stumbling into the week ahead…
Before I get into the Mardi Gras of it all, a little disclaimer. This blog is called Stumbling Across the World because it deals with my mental health struggles as I travel.
So far on this amazing road trip across America in 2015 I have been relatively okay. There have been mishaps, and a couple of anxiety issues, but nothing I can’t take in my stride.
New Orleans marks the first time on this trip where my mental health takes a serious dive.
With the glory of hindsight I remember all the good times, but there are some now obvious warning signs. I’m going to try and balance the joyful moments with the truth of how I was feeling at the time in the retelling.
And it starts here…
Mobile Mishap
For some unfathomable reason, in my hazy sleep state, I decide to turn on my mobile data for one minute to check my e-mail.
The next thing I know my network have text me to say I’ve used 30% of my allowance and have been charged £40 for using mobile data abroad.
All I did was send one message and post a Facebook status, but that is apparently 30mb of data! I must have had background functions running or something…
Anyway, the charge for the month can’t go over £40, so now that I’ve done it I might as well use the rest of my data allowance.
My top tip: Check out any roaming deals before you travel. It might be cheaper to get a monthly contract from another network whilst you travel
Our first carnival parade
Our first day in New Orleans starts off with the neighbours letting us know there is a children’s parade from all the local schools coming down Esplanade. I love that they came to let us know and get us involved in the community action.
We walk over a couple of blocks to watch and get our first taste of Carnival.
It is the perfect way to start off Mardi Gras.
All the local schools and churches are marching and baton twirling, and there is a wonderful feeling of community spirit all around us. The kids are throwing out beads to the crowd just like the big parades downtown and we gather our first strings of beads for the week.
Feeling the spirit of Mardi Gras we grab our wine coolers and walk the short journey to the French Quarter.
On the way we stop in the Visitors Centre to get some post Carnival activity ideas. There’s not much there we don’t already know, but we do pick up some leaflets about swamp tours for later in the week.
We also discover Louis Armstrong Park and take a look around St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.
Discovering the Dead
All the graves in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 are above-ground vaults. This means the whole place is quite an imposing sight. Unlike most cemeteries I’ve seen where the main feature are headstones, in New Orleans grave sites are towering constructions. Most of the mausoleums were constructed in the 18th century and 19th century.
Curious as to why the dead in New Orleans are not buried underground as is usually customary, I find this out:
New Orleans is located slightly below sea level, the water table is quite high. When early European settlers started burying coffins under six feet of earth, they found that the water level would often rise above them, especially during the city’s frequent floods.
Since the coffins were full of air, the water sometimes pushed the coffins up through the earth. Can you imagine?!
Not just a gruesome sight, but a massive a health hazard. If that wasn’t enough, the corpses became saturated with water and did not decompose properly.
In an attempt to keep the coffins underground holes were drilled in the lid to let air escape, and the coffins were weighted down with rocks and sand. But this was only partially successful…
The only solution was to bury the dead above ground.
Additionally, above-ground burial was common practice in both France and Spain, where many early settlers were from. Even without the resurfacing coffins this burial practice may have been adopted simply to keep with tradition.
In any case, this method is still widely used today, even though the water table has dropped considerably over the past two centuries as nearby marshes and swamps were drained.
Finding the French Quarter
The French Quarter is of course a busy hub of people, but we do manage to get breakfast in Oceana. The restaurant seems to have infinite dining rooms… very strange but pretty cool.
With bellies full of an assortment of food (some of us have the traditional eggs and bacon, some fish platters, and some (Jake *cough*) alligator sausages…) we take to the streets again.
We wander through the stores and dodge the beads being dropped from balconies to people below. Beads are like currency during Mardi Gras, but I don’t know why at the time. So being the curious and conscientious blogger I am I do a bit of digging. If you’re interested then I recommend this article about the history and customs of Mardi Gras.
Still, it is all a bit strange to be trading in beads since they are literally everywhere! If anything, I want to find a way to rid myself of them by the end of the day rather than get weighed down with more!
Anyway, after trying on a bunch of hats and masks in various shops, we watch the marching bands going down Bourbon and Royal Street.
Did I mention it’s crazy here?
The guys decide it is high time to start hitting the bars. And so we go our separate ways for the first time.
This will be a theme of the rest of the week. As much as I like a drink and having a night out, it’s not my priority. And ultimately, it’s my undoing in regards to my mental health. More on that later…
Preparations
Hayley, Ruth and I head to the water and walk Decatur Street. It’s a lovely area with a French Market and a Christmas Shop!
Hayley purchases her NOLA decoration of course.
And then we walk back to the house to mix our wine slushies for the week!
Back in Florida we got some slushie mix at the farmers market in Celebration. Add to that some $2.99 wine from Walmart and voila! The wine was actually good, very tasty even without the added flavour of the mix. Go Walmart!
Speaking of Walmart, that’s where we go after a bit of reading.
We pick up the fresh supplies needed to make our food for the rest of the week. Most importantly, the base ingredients for Gumbo.
The girls settle in for a nice chilled evening at home, and the boys reappear around 10PM thinking it was much later than that. Bless.
They are laden with boas and beads, and at this point I think I need to let Alex recount their evening…
Boys out in NOLA
We escape from the heat into a bar aptly named Huge Ass Beers. The girls made the wise decision to leave us to it and we enjoy our second drink of the day!
The main thing we enjoy about this bar (apart from the Huge Ass Beers of course) was the fact that there is an iron bar running through the bar to keep our drinks nice and cold!
We then head out into the thick of Bourbon Street where I am reminded of the mythical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah! After gathering some more beads from some very nice and demanding people above us we stop off into another bar called The Beach.
We are having our beer in the patio area bit out the back when a girl comes along selling test tube shots with a surprising twist. The twist being that you drink them out of her cleavage then you motor-boat said cleavage. She took quite a shining to Jake though and they shared an intimate moment when she mounted him on a stool and made him take another two.
After that round of debauchery, we wander back onto Bourbon Street where I pick up some free smokes and we make our way to the end before deciding to turn back around and head back into the thick of it.
We stop off at Rick’s Cabaret for a drink where Pete and Jake (who haven’t clocked the name) are surprised when they go to the toilet and find that the backroom is a strip club! I was not as surprised, but sadly we didn’t stay around to enjoy the all the amenities the establishment offered.
We then find our way to another bar (I know, who’d have thought?) called Fat Catz where there is a really good live Jazz band playing some awesome music. After a quick drink and a dance in there we set off to the Tropical Isle bar, where Jake became an instant hit with the older ladies in the bar! So much so, that when the live band took a break Jake got in the middle and danced for them! He got many, MANY compliments about his bum, so much so that I think Pete got a little jealous. Eventually it was a little too much fame for them both and we escaped into the streets once more.
It was getting to the time of the evening when the parade would end up passing through Canal Street, so we decide to make our way up there slowly. We meet a trio of women whom we help get some more beads and in return they help us get feather boas each! I think Pete kind of regretted his though as his t-shirt and jumper were both stained purple the next morning!
We eventually make our way to Canal Street where we get a decent view of the parade and only Pete manages to nearly get trampled by a mounted policeman!
While Pete and I are busy catching beads, coins etc. Jake is busy locking lips with one of the women we made our way to the parade with! Then he had the cheek to disappear with her! Eventually Pete and I get bored, find Jake and head home, stopping off for a quick and lovely late night burger before joining the girls back home.
[Alex Simpson}
And yes dear readers, there are many more explicit photos. But they are not for public viewing. Just annual ribbing for many years to come.
Valentine’s Mardi Gras
Happy Valentine’s Day dear readers!
It’s a beautiful day in New Orleans on February 14th. Lovely and warm with the sun shining.
We start the day by walking back to the French Market to get some apple beignets. Plus the guys haven’t even been there yet!
Pete and Jake are tasked with choosing their Christmas decoration for Hayley’s tree, and have gone for a photo frame. So their presence on her road trip themed tree is definitive rather than symbolic.
I nab a Lynchburg Lemonade from one of the outside bars in the Mask Market, and just chill out on the bank by the water enjoying the sunshine. Bliss.
Behind us we can hear a crowd cheering, so once we finish our drinks we go to have a look and see what the fuss was about…
To our slight despair we encounter a crew performing the exact same act we saw in New York all those weeks ago! Only this time they are at last at the end of their act so we finally find out what the big trick is: a guy takes a run up and does a leaping somersault over a line of crouched enlisted observers.
And that’s it.
We are so glad we abandoned the NYC crew and didn’t give over any money!
A little further along another street performer is just beginning his act, and hoping for something a bit more entertaining, we stop to watch the show.
Alexander the Magician did all the usual sleight of hand tricks, but with good flair and humour and he was pretty good. No idea how he did his last trick, I’m assuming distraction despite our concentration. Always fun watching confusing magic tricks!
And now, it’s parade time!
The Iris parade is making its way along Canal Street so we got our first taste of proper Mardi Gras throws.
‘What are “throws”’ you ask?
Well, they are exactly what they sound like – items that krewe members on floats throw into the crowds as the floats pass by!
‘What are krewe’s?’ I hear your cry. Wow, you guys are demanding today.
The parades in New Orleans are organized by Carnival krewes, the most common term for a New Orleans Carnival organization and the major krewes follow the same parade schedule and route each year. Throws include doubloons, beads, cups, homemade trinkets, toys and more! I particularly like the various artificial roses so made them my collectable challenge. Alex went for the tokens or doubloons which depict the parade theme on one side and the krewe’s emblem on the other.
With all our beads and throws in tow we go back to the house to rest and eat before heading back for the evening extravaganzas.
The boys charge ahead of us gals as per usual, but we take a shortcut and beat them home! Suckers!
I knock up a quick lasagne for dinner, then go out to watch the Endymion Parade.
The Krewe of Endymion is one of only three Super Krewes, defined by spectacular floats and celebrity Grand Marshals (Luke Bryan was this years’ but I didn’t know till later and didn’t spot him!), and is the largest of the 80 or so parades participating in New Orleans Mardi Gras. Considering that people begin saving their viewing spots for this parade several days before the parade actually rolls by we are pretty lucky to find a spot with a good view.
The Endymion motto is, “Throw Until it Hurts”, as they are extremely generous with its throws, and we can attest to that as we are literally weighed down by the end.
Alex, Ruth and I have to go back home again after the parade just to take the beads off our necks as they were so heavy!
Pete, Jake and Hayley refuse to de-bead, and make their way to Bourbon Street. It was crazy busy earlier in the day when we went by, and apparently even worse now. Hayley actually had to throw her shoes away after that night, I’ll leave the rest to your imagination!
Surry with a Fringe on Top (kinda…)
After a long day yesterday we have a nice, slow and lazy morning. I get up first and start making bacon pancakes which rouses the rest of the house. And since Hayley is the official bacon pancake queen she takes over so I can play to my strengths and produce copious amounts of coffee.
Best way to start the day! A very yummy and satisfying feast!
Energised and sated we head in the opposite direction today and go to explore City Park on yet another gloriously sunny day.
Once again the guys charge ahead like it’s a race, so they miss out on a stop at CC’s, a New Orleans based coffee house which as well as having amazing coffee, touts a King Cake Latte for Mardi Gras (cinnamon and caramel flavour!), yummy muffins, and has free wifi!!
I know having internet access shouldn’t matter much, but once it’s not there you really notice it! So it was nice to reconnect with the online world for a bit before going on to the Park.
As we walk into the sprawling parkland we are wondering what the boys might be doing, concluding that we have probably lost them for the rest of day.
Wrong!
Not thirty seconds later a resounding “YooHoo!” is heard and there they all are, riding by on a surrey. They don’t stop though and peddle off into the distance once again.
(Oh boys, lol)
Us girls sit down on the bridge over the lake and watch nature for a while, enjoying the peace and relatively people free zone of the Park. It’s quite the antithesis of the crowds down in the heart of the city.
A bit later as we wander further the boys reappear and have recovered their gentlemanly behaviour, stopping to pick us up this time. We hop on the bike and ride the park for a bit.
Now, six people on a four person peddle bike… apparently it is meant to be able to support that many but I’m not going to lie, it’s a bit of a squeeze!
Hayley is in the child seat up front and Pete eventually joined her as the opportunity to recreate the Titanic pose is too much for him to resist.
A bit embarrassingly, a runner overtakes us twice despite four people peddling, so Jake high fives him on his next pass as we hum the Chariots of Fire theme tune.
Our time up, we return the bike and discover a Sculpture Park next to the Museum of Art and pretend to be cultured for a while. I do like the horse sculpture and the water feature, the weird money-man mesh is a bit odd…
There’s a café next to the sculpture park that serves traditional Nawlins (come on, I had to write it out phonetically once) food, so naturally we have lunch there whilst listening to some live jazz!
I get some jambalaya, very tasty it is too, and manage to skype call Dad briefly in the café. I think he enjoyed the music more than talking to me, but it is very good and much louder than I am so I understand. Especially when The Animals starts playing.
Fun before the fall…
Back at the house we play cards and Pass the Pigs with a few drinks, then are back out into the French Quarter for the evening.
Happening across some live music in Margaritaville where they serve food and cocktails too is kismet, so we are sorted for a few hours.
The musician is called Casey Saba and Jake develops a quick mancrush on him. He has a songbook full of the obscure music Jake likes, and to top it off, ends his set with some Monty Python. What more can you ask for!
Interlude
Now, as I mentioned at the start of this post, New Orleans is where I have my first real struggle with my mental health on this trip. And with the benefit of reflection and hindsight I can now point to some of the unwise decisions I made which led to the this stumble.
Namely, alcohol consumption.
I’ve been drinking more than usual and on most days in the past couple of weeks. And it being Mardi Gras, there is a heavy emphasis on alcohol. The problem is, alcohol is a depressant, and it also counteracts my medication. So I’ve essentially been off my antidepressants for a while and replacing it with something that aggravates my condition.
Which is how I end up crying in the street after these photos are taken…
Back to the main feature
The next part of the evening quickly goes downhill for me, and I’m not going to bore and depress you all with it. Suffice to say that the combination of alcohol, little sleep, and a month away from home all rather overtook me as we sat in a Hookah lounge.
I have a bit of a meltdown, and cry into my margarita alone for about half an hour before Pete notices my absence and takes me outside to calm down.
I must look quite pitiful as I end up getting a hug and a glass rose from a lovely waitress.
To be honest it’s all a bit of a horrible blur, but I spend the rest of the night crying and thoroughly depressed.
Sometimes I really hate my malfunctioning brain.
In the morning I get up and sit outside on my own for a while. The peace and quiet helps, and I manage to remember the techniques in my therapy toolkit back home. Some mediation and reflection, and I feel fine by the end of the next day thanks to my amazing friends.
Recovering
After a morning of everyone being the perfect amount of kind, caring, and blessedly normal with me, the guys go out for the day and the girls stay home.
The best way to recover from a meltdown is of course some good old home cooking and old movies.
Hayley and I venture out only briefly to go to the fish market in search of shrimp. The Cajun Fish Market is really bus (obviously THE place to go for the locals) and we pick up 2lbs of shrimp for under $8! Love this place!
Then we go back to start prepping the gumbo. We find a recipe online and spend all day in the kitchen peeling shrimp, chopping veggies and frying onion rings. All whilst watching Jurassic Park and The Wizard of Oz on VHS.
So retro. I loved rewinding the tape!
After a few hours we start feeling a bit lightheaded from all the frying…
Being the Brainiac’s we are, we forgot to turn on the extractor fan!
Outside we go for some fresh air and to read our books, listening to some very random music my ipod on genius throws out.
To fully reset, I need coffee and wifi. We walk up to CC’s again and by the time we get back the boys have returned from their adventures. By which I mean, the steamboat they went on and promptly all fell asleep.
Bless them.
The gumbo goes down well, and everyone has an early night. I myself am watching Black Swan on my laptop and by the time it finishes everyone is asleep… I didn’t even notice them go to bed…
It’s Mardi Gras!
Up until this point all the festivities have actually been Carnival, but today is actually Mardi Gras!
The last day of the party and wow, they really go all out.
Some quick background information for everyone as I have been asked more than once what Mardi Gras actually is:
The Carnival season is basically a variation of preparing for the start of the Lent, which begins after Twelfth Night, on Epiphany (January 6). Celebrations are concentrated for about two weeks before and through Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras in French), also known as Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day back in the UK.
Usually there is one major parade each day, and as Mardi Gras approaches many days have several large parades. The largest and most elaborate parades take place the last five days of the season. In the final week of Carnival neighbouring communities also hold Carnival celebrations.
While many tourists centre their Carnival season activities on Bourbon Street and the French Quarter, major parades actually originate in the Uptown and Mid-City districts. They then follow a route along St. Charles Avenue and Canal Street on the upriver side of the French Quarter before finally making it to the main crowds.
The traditional colours of the New Orleans Mardi Gras are purple, green, and gold. All three colours were used by the Catholic Church throughout history and thus continued to be used in relation to Mardi Gras which was Catholic in origin.
So, that’s what the party is really all about!
One last big blow out before Lent begins.
Local Spirit
Isaac (our Vrbo host) told us about the Zulu parade yesterday which is due to go down Orleans Avenue this morning around 10:30, only a few blocks from the house. So we wander down there to get a taste of Mardi Gras from a more local perspective.
It is very different to the Canal Street section of the parade. There’s a big sense of community spirit with everyone camped out along the street with BBQs. There are no barriers along the sidewalk, and just a couple of Police Officers every few blocks. Everyone just knows the protocol and is having a good time, sharing food, and chatting with everyone around. It is really cool, totally different from the tourist jammed routes down in the French Quarter. I love it!
We are there for a good couple of hours, but it’s actually cold today! So we walk down against the parade route flow to see it all a bit quicker, and by then we are pretty hungry.
Food gets delayed by getting trapped in Louis Armstrong Park however, which only had the one gate open at the back today and no notices to tell you that you can’t get through the other side! Fail.
We eventually make it down to Decatur Street though, and yet again lose the boys as they walk waaay too fast for even my long legs! Hayley and Ruth had no chance!
We are cold and hungry though, and boys be damned, we dive into a restaurant for coffee and omelettes. They have some weird variations going on… Ruth for example has a Jambalaya omelette… she enjoyed it, but I am boring and stick to ham and cheese. A classic.
Carnival in full swing!
Figuring we’ll bump into the lads at some point, we walk around the French Quarter embracing the full extent of the craziness! There’s an amazing party vibe in the streets and people have gone all out on their costumes. Absolutely insane! We of course took a few pictures, but I can’t convey the madness to anyone who hasn’t been in the middle of it.
We slowly weave our way out of the party zone and back to the parade route. Zulu has moved on and the Krewe of Elks Orleans and the Krewe of Crescent City are following in the Wake of Rex (some New Orleans lingo for you there!). We manage to stand out of the firing line today and actually film some of the bead throwing in safety. We absolutely do not need to collect more beads!
Ruth decides to call it a day at this point and heads home. Hayley and I decide to wander the side of the city we haven’t explored before. You can’t avoid crossing the parade route though, so we do just stay and watch for a bit longer. And succumbing to the throws I manage to catch my fourth rose.
Haphazardly we find a route back down to Orleans Avenue (where we spent the morning) and the party still going! A band has set up under the i10 and people were having a great time by the looks of it.
Partied Out
As for us, we’re pretty much spent. I’m still a little fragile from the other night, and in all honesty am not really a party person anyway.
Hayley, Ruth, and I opt to cook a big batch of chilli and spend the evening in (not traditional Mardi Gras action but its what we wanted to do!).
And then the boys reappear!
And they’re not alone…
Now whilst I have a full record of that evening thanks to Pete’s genius stealth photography, I shall maintain the privacy of my friends.
Suffice to say however, our lovely open plan house is not the place for privacy. So we lovingly send the single lads back out into the night and Pete joins us girls. And he will now and forever be known as Pete: the chilli champion. Quite the sight to see! How that skinny boy put away FOUR big bowls of chilli with all the fixin’s, followed by THREE platefuls of pancakes I’ll never know. He did of course then fall asleep in an armchair.
Legend!
We also finish off the wine slush…
Now very full and tired, we build a blanket/pillow fort and watch TV till we fall asleep.
Marshmallow Swamp Pigs!
Yes you read that right.
But I’ll get to them in a moment!
It’s our last full day in New Orleans and Carnival is officially over. Pete and Jake are flying home tomorrow and the Scooby Gang be heading back on the road, bound for Texas!
To celebrate our final morning together we drive out of the city to ihop. All so the boys can have what we deem an essential American experience. Bit of a wait as it’s busy, but 100% worth it!
Then we carry on out of the city, heading to the swampland for a boat tour of the bayou.
The tour is with a company called Cajun Encounters and takes you around the Honey Island region of the bayou. It’s a bit cold today so unfortunately the gators and snakes are all hiding away. The scenery is unique and we get to see some of the houseboats and homes on the bayou with no road access, meaning you can only get there by boat.
Alex loved the houses on the water and now wants to live in the swamp…
The random and best part of the tour though is the wild pigs.
I say wild… clearly they have become pretty domesticated due to the tour boats. But they can still be pretty vicious if they want to be apparently… Our captain lures them over to the boat with marshmallows and they climb on board!
There’s a HUGE mama pig with all her little piglets running around on the bank too. Very cute. I think the tour is worth it just for that experience!
The company provides lots of videos on their website so I do recommend you check that out here. Fair warning, there are apparently videos of the gators eating the pigs… I’m okay not having that visual in my life right now so just watched the tour video!
Almost time to say goodbye…
It’s so strange how quickly the city quiets down after Mardi Gras. It’s also incredibly impressive how well the city cleans up the streets in just one day!
We make one last trip into the French Quarter for souvenir shopping. I manage to pick up the recipe postcards I want (gumbo will be happening!) and get Mum’s obligatory magnet.
Sidebar: Her fridge is quite overrun by magnets from around the world seven years later. My favourite section is still the USA Roadtrip collection though.
For our final meal as a group of six we go to Port of Call for dinner. Every time we have walked past this place there was a line out the door. It’s apparently THE place to go for a burger in New Orleans. The menu is literally two beef burgers, two veggie burgers, and three steaks. Choice may be limited but what they do they do it well that’s for sure! I couldn’t even finish mine, but it was really good grub!
And we all still have our souvenir cups all these years later!
Farewell
Time for a quick Stumble before we move on out!
Something went awry over night and when we wake up on our final morning it is FREEZING!!
Had I been a bit more with it before going to bed, I might have noticed that it wasn’t just the lamp by my bed that had stopped working… Turns out all the power outlets in both my room and Hayley and Ruth’s had gone off and with it the heating.
Still no idea why or how this happened but am not sorry to get up and out the house into the sunshine ASAP!
Hayley as always on travelling days is the last one up, but at least she isn’t ill this time (RE: Washington DC, lol sorry love).
We all go to CC’s for a farewell coffee, and on the walk there I finally solve the mystery of the speedster walking! I discover it was Jake leading the boys’ charge ahead all along, and whoever walks with him matches his pace! Should have dubbed him The Flash!
And just like that we are saying our goodbyes and thankyous to Isaac, and six become four once more.
I’m taking the first stint of driving today, and without further adieu, we hit the road towards Houston.
More specifically, Sugarland. And most importantly, to my fabulous cousin 😊
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