Epilogue (and fun trip statistics!)

Well, that's all she wrote - literally. A short flight from Orlando to Montreal, a re-acquaintance with the snow we left behind a month ago, 7 loads of laundry and a layer of cat fur on everything to welcome us home. Attempting to forget the comfortable routine we had  fallen into for 4 weeks, while attempting to remember the comfortable bed we both fell into out of exhaustion last night. Thankfully, our food stores are full, so there was no need to go to the store - a familiar bowl of oatmeal and glass of juice helped us greet the day, after the cats greeted us early this morning looking for their familiar bowl of snacks. And so I take a moment to look back on it all, as I look back on it all to finish the last few forgotten blog posts(sorry - turns out time really does fly when you are having fun, and I was having a little too much of it to keep up on my duties. I promise to do better next time!).

Distance travelled : 4509 miles (7214.4 km)
from Los Angeles to Orlando

Money spent on fuel : 1135.30$ CAD
Money spend on coffee : 183.79$ CAD (or fuel for humans)

Money spent on camping : 401.00$ CAD or ~$16/night
(note that I counted the $16 shower fee at Love's Travel Centers as a "camping fee" in this case)

Love's Travel Stops : 5

Abandoned couches spotted on the roadside:
California ||||
Arizona |
New Mexico |   (technically an office chair)
Louisiana ||||
Florida ||

Postcards sent home : 6 (including 3 with bonus dinosaur stowaways)

Tumbleweeds that met an untimely death under our campervan : 4

License plates spotted: 

(missing : Wyoming, West Virginia, Delaware, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii)
(bonus spottings: Alaska, BC, Manitoba, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, Germany, Belgium, France, Chihuahua and Mexico)

State Capitals toured : 2

National Parks stamps acquired:

• Joshua Tree National Park (Joshua Tree CA, Cottonwood CA)
• Grand Canyon National Park (Canyon View Visitor's Center, Desert View Watch Tower)
• Petrified Forest National Park (The Painted Desert, Petrified Forest)
• White Sands National Park (Alamogordo, NM)
• Carlbad Caverns National Park (Carlsbad, NM)
• San Antonio Missions NHP (Mission Concepcion, Mission San Jose, Mission San Juan, Mission Espada)
• El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail 
• Jean Lafitte NHP and Preserve - French Quarter (New Orleans, LA)
• New Orleans Jazz NHP (New Orleans, LA)

TOTAL = 15

Highest temperature : 80 F (27 C) Los Angeles, California
Highest recorded elevation : 
Hyde Memorial State RV Park, Santa Fe, NM - 8500 ft. (2600 m)

Lowest Temperature : 19 F (-8 C) Hyde Memorial, Santa Fe, NM

Lowest recorded elevation :
Interstate 10, east of New Orleans, LA - 10 ft. BELOW sea level (-3.3 m)

Would I do it all again? 

In a heartbeat. What an adventure to be waking up and falling asleep in a new place every day. To be able to experience such extremes in temperature and weather and elevation in the space of hours or days. To see so many different ecosystems, so many geological areas, and yet begin to spot similarities in them, too, from west to east. And to be able to experience so many different types of people and cultures and lifestyles, yet all the same and all within the same country. Mario said that it was probably one of those "once in a lifetime" trips, and I would tend to agree. I think we will undertake similar experiences, but there will never be a trip as gutsy, as laissez-faire as this one. We really just let things happen, and I think it was ultimately for the better. What an adventure.

Thanks again for following along, and I hope to find y'all again the next time we head out the door in search of adventure, wherever that may take us.

Until next time.

Last day.

Another early morning - we sneak quietly into the house to make coffee and oatmeal, brush our teeth, leave behind a large portion of King's Cake (and the baby - guess who has to buy the next King's Cake?). Just as quietly, we sneak back out and begin the drive into Orlando. Of course there's traffic, as there would be navigating into any big metropolis. It perfectly bookends the trip - this is how we began, escaping the gridlock in Los Angeles, running as fast as we could out to the desert safety of Joshua Tree. Now we return back to the traffic, back to the city, back to some forgotten corner of an industrial park to bring our home, or travelling companion, our campervan, back to where it belongs, which is not the cold, snowy north. 

Thankfully, the return goes off without a hitch. We overdid the clean-up, we didn't have to take the van to a car wash, etc., etc. But I know I feel better returning the campervan in a better state than we received it. I take care of my things. Plus, I want my deposit back! Now, as we gather up all our bags and I try to figure out the daunting prospect of take a bus across town to our hotel, Mario calls an Uber. It's the best idea ever - I don't what state our nerves would have been in after trying to negotiate our way on not one, but TWO buses to the airport hotel complex! We arrive early, and there's a room waiting for us, and oh! That first shower in a few days is heavenly.

Mario is overly-proud of this odometer - check  out the time spend driving!

This is a bonus day: I had booked the night at the hotel to avoid any serious rushing and coordinating given that we had to return the rental, and we've done that before in Iceland and Guadeloupe, and it adds extra stress know you have to go through the whole process, plus get to the airport for a flight afterwards. I decided the extra day would save us the stress. Turns out this is the best place to have booked an extra day. Orlando airport is surrounded with hotels, which are surrounded by restaurants and shops and lakes and sidewalks and a park...There is plenty to keep us busy and not stuck in the hotel room watching mindless TV for the rest of the day.

First, we take a walk across the highway to a park with a big lake, and some trails, and a disk golf course. You read that right - a serious disk golf course, where players even have caddies on wheels they tow behind them, filled with different makes of soft disks - but this is just the golf you play with a frisbee. It almost seems farcical, but the players look so serious... We walk around the area, admiring the Spanish moss hanging majestically in the overhead branches, giving the forest a look of mystery.

Next, we head back across the highway, towards the shops and restaurants, for one last coffee stop at Starbucks. This is not a habit we have at home, but it's one we've come to enjoy on vacation. Again, I order the iced pistachio thing, but for the first time, it's hot enough that Mario also gets an iced espresso. It's a beautiful, sunny, and humid day in Orlando, and an enjoyable 24 degrees C. We are soaking it up, walking along the sidewalks, sipping our coffees and watching the planes soaring overhead. 

There's also a cinema in this hotel/mall/airport neighbourhood, which I find out while investigating Google maps back in the hotel room. I check what's playing, and for our next stop, we end up heading over to watch the afternoon showing of "A Man Called Otto". Wow - what a good movie! I highly recommend it, and Mario too - Tom Hanks is wonderful, the story is fantastic, and it really covers all the emotions. Plus, unbeknownst to us, the cinema has fully reclining seats, which makes the experience that much more fun and comfortable - we have a blast.

We exit out into the balmy night air and it's still early, though the sky is dark. Our next stop is right next door, at Rock & Brews, a restaurant with a beer and music theme. Inside, music videos play on giant screens, and we try to guess the artists without looking. We order a flight, because we are always about trying new things, and choose all the locally-brewed beers available on tap. Along with the impromptu beer tasting, we share an entree of crispy fried calamari, served with herbed aioli and homemade marinara sauce, which is excellent, followed by lack-luster mains. My salad topped with blackened salmon, and Mario's Hamburguesa burger are just okay - edible, but certainly not on par with the flavour and presentation of the calamari. But it is good, and we have a great time being out and about for our last night of vacation, and I could not have asked for a closing to a fantastic month - we walk back to the hotel happy and full and rested, and ready for the voyage home.

The beginning of the end.

Now begins the beginning of the end of the great adventure, and perhaps a few days earlier than we would want, but this was a big one, and there are quite a few loose ends to tie up before heading home - we don't want to leave everything until the last minute, either. First, an early start to the day gifts us with one of the most beautiful and peaceful sunrises we've seen this trip, with a couple of pelicans fishing along the shore next to the boat launch, tossing their catch up in the air and into their big bills. Then the fishermen started arriving in their noisy pick-ups and ruined the mood. Oh well.

Our "campsite" for the night	One lone toilet in the boat launch parking

We have about 2.5 hours of driving to get to our stop tonight, but most of that trek is on a big, busy boulevard plagued by construction, traffic lights and shopping malls, so the going is slow. Also, we are searching for a car wash. Now this should be a relatively easy task, as there is one on just about every block. But the campervan is tall - too tall to fit into those car wash tunnels, and every one we see is a tunnel. So I sit there, watching Google Maps, searching for car washes, watching the road, trying to see if one of these places in NOT a tunnel. For 2 hours. We find one, but it  seems closed, and the cashier in charge of the storage facility next door seems to think the place hasn't works in over a year, so we move on. I finally find one on a back street which we just barely fit into, having to drive in to wash the front of the van, then back in to finish the rest. What a hassle - and it's coin-operated, so Mario and I are running around at high speed, trying to wash and rinse everything as fast as possible before our time - and money - runs out. In the end, there is a little less Luckenbach mud on the running boards, a few less Galveston mosquitos stuck to the front, and the van is no longer an ombre shade of dinge, so mission accomplished.

We make it to Gulfport for lunch, where Uncle Kevin is working on his rental property, and welcomes us with a smile and a bunch of questions about our month living in a van. We sit for moment for some ham sandwiches, and to drink some of that sweet, sweet tea, then get to work pulling all of the things out of storage from all of the hidden recesses of the camper. Turns out, you can accumulate a lot of stuff in 25 days of driving and camping, and when you hide it out of sight for better storage, you forget what you've bought, what you've collected, what you've accumulated. Turns out, it might not all fit in the backpacks that were already too full to begin with, back when we left Canada. Thankfully, Uncle Kevin is willing to take a few things back for us in his truck - our blankets, all of my collected pamphlets and paper souvenirs, our frozen daiquiri cup that is just too tall to squash into a backpack. My bag is still overflowing, but I'll figure that out tomorrow.

We take a walk around cute little boutique-y Gulfport, a town we have been to before, but never in this iteration. The main street is lined with little shops, selling souvenir t-shirts and Pinterest-inspired home decor, high-end coffees and ice cream cones, pet accessories and  pizza. There are several restaurants specializing in seafood, because Gold Coast, and even more art studios hidden here and there in the neighborhood. The community centre is full of kids, as is the skate park, and the beach volleyball courts. Though it is too cold for swimming, people are at the beach, enjoying the sun, and the sand, the sea birds and the sea air. It's a quiet, safe place - always was - and I could definitely see myself staying here longer, but not this time. This time we are only passing through.

Over a dinner of BBQ Shrimp and Grits made with the spices we proccurred in New Orleans, we talk about our many adventures on the road, the driving and the weather, the camping and the gas station overnights. And yes, it only took me 2 days to remake the dish from New Orleans School of Cooking - it was that good. Look forward to stories of gumbo-making in the near future!

One last night sleeping in our van, though tonight, it feels different. Cupboards are empty, things are packed, there aren't towels and Mardi Gras beads hanging everywhere. It's still just as comfy, but feels less...established. Guess that's the point, until we get one that is no longer a rental we have to return, but one that is truly ours.

Long drive through Florida

Another travel day - for whatever reason, we spent most of the beginning of the trip doing small travel days paired with big visits, whereas now we are having BIG travel days with little to no visiting, but we are managing to squeeze little stops in here and there, just to break up the monotony of driving all day. It's all Florida now.

In our campervan, I make pancakes while overlooking the lake, which in this case is a runoff reservoir in the parking lots of the Love's we stayed at. I guess it's all just a matter of perspective, right? We fill up the propane for the last time, enjoy a piece or two of King's Cake, while strategically avoiding the baby, which we brought from New Orleans. Then we get off the Interstate and onto the scenic byway along the Gulf coast. The drive will be twice as long but 3 times as interesting, and shorter in miles, which is good because we are officially over now. Every mile we can cut counts, without penalizing ourselves, either. But it was interesting to find out that the scenic road was actually short in distance than the Interstate highway.

Stop one is at Princess Beach near Eglin A.F.B., near Destin, Florida, where the sand calls us and we run out barefoot to feel the sun on our skin. There are very few people on this beach in the middle of an airbase - a sign mentions permits, but no one is here to check, and anyways, we don't stay long. In one directions, the water is clear, the sky is blue and the sun shining, but turn around and we are facing the black clouds of an imminent storm. We hurry back to the van and cut another piece of King's Cake.

Check out the dunes!
	Blue sky on one side...
...and incoming storms on the other.	Full-sized drone from the Air Force Base

We drive along coast byways and causeways, island-hopping our way along the Gulf coast. So much of it is sand, I wonder how the massive resort hotels, towering 10 and 15 storeys tall, don't fall over into the ocean on such an unsturdy base. Each is tethered to a parking garage on the other side of the roadway, so maybe that's why. The beach is gated and closed and signs everywhere tell us DO NOT ENTER,  and PRIVATE, and I find it all a little sad to have such beauty and not share it. 

Even further along, in Santa Monica and Laguna Beach, where it's no longer towers but private homes, the sand is still hidden, all the way until then end of Laguna where we finally, FINALLY find a spot to pull over. I throw open the the sliding door, letting the sea air fill my lungs, and Mario runs out to the water. I make sandwiches, and we sit in the doorway of our little sanctuary and admire the views while eating lunch and drinking sweet tea.

Yet another stop at Starbucks for one of their new pistachio beverages and that curiously questionable drip black coffee for Mario and we continue on. It's been funny watching the different reactions from the baristas when ordering a plain drip coffee and not some cocktail of syrups and sauces and non-milks and whips that everyone gets. It has ranged from shock to confusion to sheer joy at the ease of preparation - one girl even had to ask a manager what a "drip coffee" was! But the opposite is fun to observe, too. We've seen and heard so many concoctions being ordered and the baristas don't even blink an eye - one guy's order was so complicated, he couldn't even remember the whole thing himself, and had to read it off his phone! 

The rest of the drive was nice, heading through historic Apalachicola in Franklin county - which would perhaps warrant a return to enjoy more, while listening to suitably appropriate public radio stations as a soundtrack. We learn that Florida has their own breed of black bears, and that we should watch out for them, and that there is a hidden IGA grocery store in Carabelle, but we still can't figure out why. 

We head far into the islands of Ozello, along a narrow road that snakes in between water and swamp,  to the boat launch, where we find free camping spots for the night. Surprisingly, as remote as this place seemed on the map driving in, we pass by a number of houses all along the route, and a total of 3 restaurants! Even the very end of the road where the boat launch is has a couple of houses, and the park is equipped with picnic tables, garbage cans and a pot-o-potty, so this is a perfectly suitable and quiet place to spend the night. So much for out in the middle of nowhere! At least the stars are still beautiful.

Louisiana cooking!

When I was planning out this trip, I put out a call to the general populous(read: my friends on Facebook) for suggestions of things to see and do on this trip. Of course, I was already looking for a chance to cook some Creole and Cajun food, so when Jason suggested Mario and I give the New Orleans School of Cooking a go, of course I immediately booked a class. This morning, breakfast was a piece of toast, because if you have ever taken a cooking class, then you know you always come away absolutely stuffed full of good food. 

Chef Cindy welcomed us with open arms, and with a mimosa and a Bloody Mary. Our little group of 11 was excited and ready to learn, and she had lots of information to share with us, about the history of food in Louisiana and the beginnings of Creole food, a combination of cuisines from the African slaves(okra), mixed with both French country(one-pot hearty meals) and French classical(cooking techniques) cuisines. Also of the Cajun food, more homey because the Acadiana cuisine is based on a history of hunting, fishing and foraging off the land, and incorporates a lot of spice(flavour, not heat) to camouflage the heavy, often-gamey taste of their ingredients. I speculated that maybe, since Louisiana has been know for chili-growing and hot sauce production for a long time, some of those early people may have "foraged" peppers from the outskirts of plantations, which is where the heat comes from, but this is only a hypothesis made after class, so I have no info to back it up. Take it as you will. 

Drinks in hand, we get to cooking up our Louisiana dishes: First, we learn the basics of how to make a proper roux, the base of most Creole dishes, by cooking flour in lard until it toasts a nice chocolate colour, then using this base to sweat the onions, celery and peppers, known as the trinity. Now to turn it into Gumbo, a classic Creole dish: We add some fried andouille sausage, cooked chicken and stock, and let the whole thing simmer to thicken. It's that easy. You can add some creole spice mix to it, called Joe's Stuff, or some Filé powder(ground young sassafras leaves) to thicken it more, or even hot sauce, if that's your thing. Then you enjoy it with fresh bread or rice, or eat it like a soup with a spoon, but it's very hearty. And for so few ingredients, the real flavour comes from the proper understanding of the preparation techniques, because the flavour is quite complex and unique and homey.

Jumbo shrimp!

Next up, BBQ Shrimp and Grits, which is also surprisingly easy to make. An important thing to note is that BBQ shrimp is in no way barbecued, nor grilled, nor has it seen flames at all during its cooking process. The barbecue is referring to the sauce that the shrimp is simmered in, containing all sorts of herbs and spices, garlic, Worcestershire sauce and butter. It too, like the Gumbo, is more about technique to build a flavourful dish, so we learn much about the Louisiana spice mixes and their creations before we get to making the dish. Our grits, on the other hand, have been simmering since we sat down to eat! Add in some cheese for creaminess, top with the shrimps in rich, flavourful sauce, and of course the dish is delicious. Even after eating a full helping of Gumbo, we all devour our BBQ Shrimp and Grits with gusto, and maybe another glass of wine, too. 

Our third course is a history lesson in the invention of Bananas Foster, a dish created out need for simplicity, while still retaining that "wow" factor. I mean, how can you go wrong? Bananas sauteed in butter and brown sugar, then deglazed with banana liqueur AND rum, and flambeed right before your eyes before being generously ladled over vanilla ice cream and still-warm french crepes - so good. Plus, chef Cindy upped the "wow" factor to another level by tossing in some  "Magic Dust", ground cinnamon, which when it comes in contact with the flames, ignites instantly in a shower of sparks! And it smells divine, too! Funny enough, the crepes are not part of the original Bananas Foster recipe, just an addition to the course today, ironically enough - and I have just as much fun making those as all the rest of the dishes, but it is certainly nothing new to me. Packy, our sous-chef, is impressed, so I share with him in confidence that maybe I do this for a living. He laughs, and remarks how he might have thought that given my technique and comfort with the crepe pan. Needless to say, I make 3 in the time it takes everyone else to prepare just 2, and Mario is happy.

After all that eating, we are stuffed. We roll our way back to the campervan, and then slowly roll our way out of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. Another one down. The rest of the day is pretty much a driving day: We decide to leave the I-10 as quickly as possible once we enter Mississippi, running the length of the Gulf of Mexico. Beautiful white sand beaches spread out on the right side of the car, while bigger and bigger hotels and resorts and maybe a casino or two appear of the left. We originally meant to camp at one of these beaches, in the pull-off parking areas, but the town here has become weary of overnight campers using all the space, and so have made it illegal now. It's sad when people abuse too much of a good thing and ruin it for everyone. So we drive on, watching the town and fishing boats and water whizz by.

Soon, we are in Alabama, and seeing more of the same. As the sun is going down, we take a last stop at a Buc-ee's for some beaver nuts/candied pecans and a brisket sandwich. It's just okay - it's certainly not the deliciousness we tasted at the Salt Lick. No giant drinks this time, nor hot beaver water being passed off as coffee. We've been fooled enough. 

Wanting to make some progress on the driving, and since Mario is feeling good, we press on, making it all the way into Florida before pulling into a Love's for the night. It's big but surprisingly quiet for being right next to the highway, and it will give us a chance to fill the propane and NOT use the grey tank - that's right, we are beginning to think of all the task that need to be completely before returning this great beast. As sad as it sounds, the trip is slowly winding down. Two more days of #vanlife.