Singing Songs About the Southland

After New York, we headed South, relatively quickly. We'd have loved to have stayed longer in some places, but, as we mentioned in a postcard, "we have tickets home now, so we gotta scoot". As such, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia passed by in a flash. [Cue movie-style montage, indicating passage of time]:

New Jersey
We visited with some old friends from New Zealand while in New Jersey. We also the visited the Jersey Shore, but alas, we saw not one guido. We did, however, find some mildly carnivorous seagulls.



Nancy's pseudo-grandparents.


Our friends very kindly took us to Philadelphia for the day. There, we saw an assortment of incredible street murals, Benjamin Franklin's loo, and various placards outlining fundamentals of American law. We thought some of them were especially pertinent, given the police brutality and brute force being used against peaceful protesters across the country.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom
of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Ben Franklin's commode.

Before we post the next photo, here's little background information. In Canada, there is a book series (and now, a morning cartoon spinoff) about a child-turtle named Franklin. He looks like this:

Each book title involves some activity of Franklin's (for example, Franklin Goes to School). The series is sickly wholesome. We thought the following sign was hilarious, because we couldn't get the image of this righteous little turtle out of our heads as we read it:

Damn Franklin's heirs!



The bottom comment translates to something like
"I always imagined paradise to be some kind of library."





Will meets Willie (Westfalia).

North Carolina
From there, we continued on to North Carolina, stealth camping for the first time in a Walmart parking lot along the way. We don't recommend it. There are some truly weird people going into Walmarts at 4am.



The Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel-Bridge-Tunnel



A real cotton field!

 In North Carolina, we spent a week with Steff's family. They took us to the mountain towns surrounding Mooresville, which were beautiful. Certain mountain towns, such as Asheville, were interesting in that they were extremely liberal pockets almost completely enshrouded by the rest of the typically conservative state.

This photo certainly doesn't capture the variety and depth of autumnal colour in
these mountainous areas.

Steff makes friends.

Our next stop was Charleston, South Carolina. It was quite the experience driving into the urban centre. As we approached the city from the northwest, we saw row after row of chain-link fences, and houses with broken-down cars parked out front. We were planning on stealth-camping in the city, so we were feeling apprehensive; we reassured ourselves with the knowledge that the outskirts of a city often appear slightly more dangerous than the downtown area. However, as we continued, these "outskirts" stretched on. We exited the freeway and drove into the downtown, and still, we were surrounded by ramshackle buildings, buildings that were once beautiful but which now would probably not pass building inspection. Suddenly, we popped into what seemed to be a completely different city: the architecture was beautifully maintained, crisply painted. From Goodwill shops, gospel churches, and NAILZ TO GO, we had stumbled unexpectedly into the Grand Historic Downtown. There, we found hordes of tourists on walking tours, huddled into the tight city blocks and taking photographs. And for some reason, everyone was blonde-haired and blue-eyed. What happened to all of the African-Americans from two blocks back? What did they think of this version of Charleston, where everyone's accents were from out of state? That said, it was beautiful in downtown Charleston, but in the same way that a mask can be pretty or alluring. We liked this mask, definitely--old, verandah-ed homes, trees lining the streets, Spanish moss, the waterfront...but it felt a little ingenuine. We were not disappointed however: it was all part of the experience. Photo time!

This is where we ended up sleeping.



Nancy at the entrance to the old slave market. This market is now a huge area filled with tourist
merchandise--an interesting shift. The sign at the entrance reads
"Daughters of Confederacy".

 

 



Apparently most of these houses were originally
owned by plantation owners, as vacation homes.

  

 

Halloween is huge in America.



If Nancy ever made a rap album, this would be the cover.

Florida
...And from Charleston we drove to St. Augustine, Florida. Here we are at the Castillo de San Marcos fort.

Nancy takes in the Spanish moss as the Kiwi Moss takes her photo.



Stained glass windows from the St. Augustine Cathedal. The
building was rebuilt years ago, but it allegedly provided
a spiritual home for North America's oldest Catholic
congregation.





Occupy St. Augustine. He may be the only one
there, but he's occuping hard.

The wild epiphyte Tillandsia, also known as
air plants. They gather nutrients from the air,
and they're all the rage in Berkeley. The difference
 is that the Berkeley varieties are $5 a pop,
whereas these were everywhere in St. Augustine.

Following a few days in St. Augustine, we headed to our final stop for the trip: Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Coming up next (click on the picture for full-size image):

The Quest Quotient by Nancy Howie and Steff Werman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at thequestquotient2011.blogspot.com.