We started our final morning in New Orleans with the requisite trip back to Café du Monde for a delicious (though not nutritious) breakfast of beignets buried in a mountain of powdered sugar, as well as their famous chicory coffee to wake Charla up and, in anticipation of our arrival in the Sunshine State, some fresh-squeezed OJ for Chase.  On our way out of town we drove across the 23-mile Pontchartrain Causeway.  The bridge across Lake Pontchartrain is so long that allegedly one can see the curvature of the earth while crossing the bridge; unfortunately for us, a tanker truck was leaking corrosive chemical waste on I-10, which shut down the Interstate, and forced so much traffic onto the Causeway we didn’t get to see anything too exciting.

     On the other side of Lake Pontchartrain, we finally arrived in Abita Springs, Louisiana, the home of Abita beer.  The sweet smell of the brewery greeted us as we walked in to find the sampling room already open before our 2:00 tour.  The tour of the facility started with two short videos, one about the brewing process and the other about Abita’s mission to go green, and then we were guided into the large room filled with tanks where our only instructions were not to touch anything shiny.  The tour was short but informative, and most importantly, it left us with an even greater love of this Louisianan brew.

     Leaving Abita we jumped on to I-12, to I-10, to the Mississippi state line and the shockingly nice Mississippi Welcome Center.  Also near the Welcome Center is the NASA Infinity Center; the name sounded impressive yet vague, but when we arrived they had just closed and we didn’t end up learning anything more about it.  Once we were in Mississippi we ducked off the Interstate onto US90, a scenic rural highway along the coast.  In the town of Waveland we had a very exciting moment when we saw the Gulf of Mexico for the first time of the trip!  We, of course, slammed on the brakes and waded out to play on Waveland Beach before continuing on east. 

     We stayed on US90 until the sun set, and once the views were gone we jumped back on I-10 for the long slog east.  I-10 passed us right on through the 55 miles of Alabama and the 200 miles of the Florida Panhandle before finally arriving in Tallahassee at 2AM.  Charla operated as our Tallahassee tour guide, pointing out both the sights and the day-to-day necessities of the city, until we stopped for the night to say hello to Charla’s mom and goodbye to our road trip from Talkeetna to Tallahassee.

     From the Kisatchie National Forest, we drove through the bayou to reach I-49 again and continuing heading south, bringing us to Alexandria.  We made a loop that took us by the airpark and into town for gas and breakfast.  About another hour south of Alexandria on I-49, we faced a decision in Lafayette:  go further south to Avery Island or get on I-10 to go to Abita Springs.  Chase made a few phone calls to reach the Abita Brewery and check their tour times, revealing that we would have to make Abita a stop on Wednesday if we wished to participate.  So, we kept going south to the beautiful Avery Island, home of the McIlhenny family’s famous Tabasco sauce.  To get on the island, we were stopped at a small tollbooth (well, really more of a tollhouse, like the cookie!), where a kind gentlemen asked for our dollar fee to support the wildlife conservation efforts and extended a stick with a clothespin on the end to exchange a card for our toll fee.

     On Avery Island, we went on a Tabasco factory tour that included a guided exhibit and a short video before we filed past the bottling line.  Though our hostess gave us two small bottles of Tabasco each, the best part of the tour was just a few steps away at the country store, where we were able to sample Tabasco’s range of sauces as well as jalapeno ice cream.  Our favorite sauce was one of their newer products, the Sweet and Spicy Tabasco sauce, which Charla stocked up on for a shrimp boil in the very near future.

     In the country store, we met Kina, a lovely sales associate who answered all of our questions, including where to find the nearest Post Office.  Much of Avery Island (aside from the Tabasco property and something called Jungle Gardens) is restricted to residents only, but with Kina’s golden permission we were able to drive past the barricades to the Post Office.  The Avery Island Post Office is a small, vine-covered building, with a nice Postmaster who helped us out with a variety of requests as we overloaded her with postcards, letters, and packages we’d been meaning to send for a while.

     After leaving the restricted zone we jumped back on US90 to New Orleans and rolled into town in the mid-afternoon.  As a gift to make the end of our trip awesome, Charla’s dad gave us a couple nights’ stay at the Loews New Orleans.  We were greeted by the friendly staff outside who got a kick out of our vehicle that’s covered with dirt (and a few drawings in it), packed to the brim, and toting half of a bicycle.  Inside, the front desk welcomed us with cold cherry lemonade and a basket of Louisiana treats like Abita beer and Zapp’s Voodoo potato chips.  From there, we went up to the eighteenth floor, where our corner room offered nice views of the evening sun over the Mississippi River.

     We only stayed in the room a short time before heading out to wander about the city of New Orleans.  Coincidentally, on the way out the door the bellmen were just taking another vehicle with Alaska tags and “AK to FL” written on the windshield; come to find out we’re not the only guests in the hotel on this journey!  They were on day twenty of an Anchorage – Fort Walton Beach drive, but they had taken a more northern route than us.  After running into our “travel-mates” we continued on into the French Quarter to visit the Crescent City Brewhouse.  They’re slogan is “The food’s so good you’ll forgot you came for the beer,” which largely proved true with unremarkable brews but amazing crabmeat stuffed shrimp and shrimp and grits!  After dinner we decided to skip out on the wild-and-crazy French Quarter scene for the more sedate (and musically fascinating) scene on Frenchmen Street in the Faubourg Marginy neighborhood.  We started our evening at Maison, which was hosting its Super Jam Open Mic night; on stage there was a core band of saxophone, keyboards, drums, and guitar, but accompanied by a constantly rotating assortment of horn players and vocalists.  After a while of listening to different musicians, we moved a short way down the street to the Blue Nile where an extremely large and energetic brass band was rocking the night.

_      Heading east on Highway 380 out of Brownfield, we drove through several other small towns before connecting on Highway 82 to I-20.  I-20 led us to a nice rest area at Stink Creek, where we made breakfast on our trusty Coleman camp stove.  Our egg sandwiches were far from stinky, and we were ready to head to Dallas.

_      After breakfast, we had the pleasure of meeting Officer Hubbard of the Texas Highway Patrol.  Unfortunately, we met Officer Hubbard on the shoulder of I-20 shortly after we had been driving 80 miles per hour in a 75 mile-per-hour-zone.  After answering a few cursory questions and letting Officer Hubbard take Chase’s Alaska drivers’ license back to his patrol car, Chase received a typewritten warning about his speed (but not a speeding ticket, with no points on his license and nothing added to his record).  Interestingly enough, the warning goes so far as to imply that the Texas Department of Public Safety feels that Chase is a good citizen, which left us both feeling happy.

_      The next exit of the interstate made us feel even happier, as we happened upon our first Chick-Fil-A of the trip.  Chick-Fil-A is a fast food chicken restaurant in the South (they didn’t invent chicken, just the chicken sandwich) which does not have any locations in Alaska; Chase hadn’t eaten at a Chick-Fil-A since last year when he left the Lower 48.  Ever since the trip started, we had a deal that we’d stop to eat at the first one we saw.  Despite just recently eating breakfast, it was time to make good on the deal.  After a small meal of chicken strips and Chick-Fil-A’s famous waffle fries, we were back on the road towards Dallas.

_      As we neared Dallas, we came to the realization that the city road planners don’t really understand how to use the four cardinal directions.  First of all, we were heading to an apartment building that was located on East Northwest Highway.  Even more perplexing, to get to East Northwest, we had to drive on I-35 East North.  Somehow we found our way and arrived at Chris and Mary’s apartment.  Chris welcomed us with some Shiner, a local Texan beer, and we immediately began reminiscing about our college experience.  The four of us all attended Vassar College (Chris and Chase were roommates for a while), so we definitely had a lot to talk about.  Unfortunately, Mary has been waylaid by a knee injury and is spending a lot of time in bed.  We also met Chris and Mary’s roommate Katie, and we all ended up getting along swimmingly.

     We interrupted our trip down Memory Lane to run to the store and grab food for a barbecue.  But, our idea of a barbecue suddenly veered slightly off course and turned into a seafood feast since shrimp was a good price and tilapia filets were “buy one two-pound package, get three free.”  Charla boiled a pound and a half of shrimp for us all, while Chris grilled up four pounds of tilapia for a delicious dinner with friends.

_      After seeing the view from the tower last night, we wanted to return one more time during the day so that we could see more than just the lights from the Strip.  The red mountains surrounding the city and limiting the growth of its sprawl were beautiful juxtaposed against the blue sky, and they are very different from the white mountains Chase is used to seeing in Alaska.

_      Once we finally left our hotel, Charla created a fun challenge for us to attempt.  Near the hotel was Bonanza Gifts, the tackiest-looking gift shop on the Strip.  We were each going to spend 15 minutes shopping, with a $5 maximum, to buy the other the tackiest item we could find, and we’d have to wear the other’s “gift” at some point during the road trip.  Much to our dismay, though the shop was incredibly tacky, it was also shockingly expensive, and we realized that a $5 maximum would not provide for more than a glittery keychain flask.  Sadly enough, we decided to scrap the challenge and must rely on our own already tacky wardrobe for the rest of the trip.

_      Unfortunately, while parked in a lot on the strip, we were approached by our parking lot attendant who notified us that someone had stolen the tire and wheel off of Chase’s bicycle, which was mounted on a bike rack on the Pilot.  The parking lot attendant had attempted to stop the man and had called the police, who arrived shortly thereafter.  Even more unfortunate, we had seen a man riding a bicycle carrying an extra bicycle wheel a few minutes earlier, but didn’t think much of it.  Las Vegas Metro Police have a shockingly quick response time, dispatching two police cars and two police motorcycles to the parking lot, but a brief search failed to turn up the suspect or the wheel.  Oddly enough, one of the responding officers notified us that they had recently raised the minimum for petty larceny to $650, which means that in effect it is not a crime to steal tires off of bicycles; if they ever caught the suspect, they’d give him a ticket on par with a ticket for jaywalking.  Even so, we filed a police report and the police took pictures, noting the brand and size of the wheel and tire.  We can only hope that the wheel happens to find its way into police custody in the next few days, or Chase will be buying a new one in Florida.  (In reality, we think that if the motorcycle cops didn’t spot the guy in the first few minutes, the odds of it ever turning up are remarkably slim.)

_      Finally making our way out of town, we stopped at the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign, something we probably would have done a couple days before if it were not on the opposite end of the Strip from where we were staying.  We said a quick hello and goodbye to the city of sin (and to an Elvis impersonator taking tourist photos there) and got out.  Before we were too far away, we spotted a Jack in the Box, which was offering free chicken nuggets for the people of Las Vegas.  We counted ourselves among that crowd for a hot second and took the chicken nuggets to go.

_      As we made our way to Hoover Dam, a small brewery in Boulder City caught our eyes, so we stopped at the Boulder Dam Brewing Company to try their sample flight, conveniently arranged in the shape of the dam.

_      Leaving Boulder City, we soon arrived at the Hoover Dam, and the trusty Pilot once again had the pleasure of driving over a massive dam.  We stopped for photos on the far side of the dam, as we crossed the Arizona state line, and then we parked the Pilot to walk back into Nevada over the dam.

_     From Hoover Dam, we traveled Highway 93 to I-40 and into the quaint town of Williams, whose main street is the famous Route 66 (we got our kicks!).  We had planned to go all the way to the Grand Canyon that night, but Williams captured us, and we decided to stay.

_      Like many other mornings on this trip, we started out today with breakfast sandwiches; this time from the Great Harvest Bread Company in downtown Bend.  (Tomato and spinach were only a dollar extra, but well worth it.)  After breakfast we made our way to the Deschutes Brewery, hoping to enjoy the visitor center and a tour.  Surprisingly, we arrived 45 minutes before they opened.  That gave us time to talk to the bartenders, who gave us a Bend Ale Trail map and sent us on our way.  We had no idea that Bend had nine breweries!

_      After a quick gas fill-up, we were on our way out of town heading east on Highway 20.  We once again entered the crazy high desert terrain from yesterday.  We agreed that we never imagined this kind of topography would exist in Oregon, as it instead conjures ideas of the Southwest.  Another gas top off in Burns (because you never know where the next station will be in the desert) and we were heading south on Highway 78.  Our friend Chris, from Talkeetna, had told us to be on the lookout for hot springs in this area, and we quickly came to Crystal Crane Hot Springs.  We were looking for something natural, not commercial, but we soon changed our mind on hot springs entirely; when the air temperature is this hot, 101 degree water just doesn’t feel pleasant.

_      Pulling away from Crystal Crane the sky acquired a pink hue and the sun began to turn red.  Apparently there is a forest fire burning in Fields, and the smoke from the fire is creating a haze throughout the eastern reaches of the state.  As the haze caused dusk to come earlier than normal, we pulled off the road and found a great spot to camp on top of a butte overlooking the Steens Mountains.  Once again from the top of our butte we were able to enjoy some amazing stargazing and watch the Perseid meteor show.

     In other news, we finally found the most elusive license plate for our license plate game:  Hawaii!  It was on a car just sitting there in downtown Bend.  (Click here to see how the game is progressing.)  Coincidentally, before we even said anything about it, the gas station attendant in Burns also mentioned that he had seen a Hawaii license plate pull through today for the first time in a long while.  Maybe there are some Hawaiians out there doing the same drive we are, at least from Portland to Las Vegas.  If you see the silver Honda Pilot with the Alaska tag and the bike on the back, honk your horn!

Note:  While touring the Bend Ale Trail, we shared small size samples over the course of several hours and with two meals.  Please enjoy the Ale Trail responsibly and don't drink and drive!

     We started our day at Tiny’s, a trendy little coffee shop near Elliot and Brad’s apartment that featured delicious breakfast sandwiches and good coffee.  There, we said good bye to Brad and made moves to our last stop in Portland, the city’s staple where good things come in pink boxes.  We could not possibly leave without trying Voodoo Doughnut (Too)!  When we pulled into the parking lot, Charla spotted a Voodoo Doughnut tuk tuk.  She didn’t even need to try one of their creations before she was in love.  We waited in the short line (much shorter than the one wrapping around the block in front of the original Voodoo shop we had checked out on our first night) and then faced a difficult decision:  what to order?  Chase settled on the Portland Cream and the Maple Bacon Bar (yes, that’s bacon on a doughnut!) while Charla went the sweet route with a Captain My Captain, covered in Cap’n Crunch cereal, and an Oreo King, topped with Oreo crumbles and chocolate.

     A few miles on I-84 led us to Highway 26, a scenic road that took us through Mt. Hood National Forest.  To get an even better view of the snow topped mountain, we cruised up to Timberline Lodge.  There were skiers and riders walking around the lodge, and Chase started aching for a ride.  If only the winter gear were more accessible in the Pilot right now!  Meanwhile, Charla was channeling her inner film buff and getting a little scared just thinking of The Shining, which filmed its outside shots here.

     After leaving Timberline and driving southeast, we started to experience a dramatic change of topography and temperature.  From the cool mountain climes that promoted the growth of much greenery, we entered into the hot and dry high desert where the only green we saw grew up around irrigation systems.  Coming into Bend, we came back into a lot of vegetation, as the Deschutes River and National Forest are nearby.

     Miles back, in Kirkland, Washington, Charla spotted her first Jimmy John’s since returning from Southeast Asia, but we went out for a great Thai meal with Alison instead.  The craving had not gone away, so we went straight to Jimmy’s when we arrived in Bend.  After loading up on sandwiches, we walked around downtown and the riverside before going to the Deschutes Brew Pub to sample the local brews.  In addition to the Chainbreaker White IPA and Spencer’s Gold Ale, the bar staff gave us directions to a camping spot in the National Forest.  We ended up pulling off the road a bit before their favorite locale by Tumalo Creek for a good place to watch the Perseid meteor shower that was just getting into swing.

_     Our day began with texts from Elliot: “Make me a breakfast sammich!”  Over egg sammiches, we made plans for the day to go to “the river,” a Portlander term for any river surrounding the city.  After making friends with Grace and Benji, we followed them to the Washougal River just over the Washington border.  We were on I-5 for just a few minutes before taking a state road that led to the dusty, gravel Forest Service roads.   Grace led us to a spot perfect for swimming and catching some sun, a place where the current slowed around the rocks scattered throughout the middle of the river.  Just upriver was a large swimming hole surrounded by rock faces perfect for jumping.  The sun dipped below the surrounding mountains in the mid-afternoon, so we moved from our secluded spot to Dougan Falls, a more populated spot but one that had better sun.  Dougan Falls was a series of short waterfalls that you could swim under, climb up, and play around.  Unfortunately, it was nearing time for Benji to go to work, so the whole crew returned to the city to drop him off.

_      Back in Portland, we made a stop for some groceries for a quick dinner at sunset overlooking the Coast Range from a beautiful apartment that Grace was housesitting.  After dinner, we retreated to the complex’s pool and hot tub.  We expected the river water to be cold, but even though the pool was relatively warm, it felt cold to us and we stayed in the hot tub.

     At Elliot and Brad’s, we caught up on the day’s Olympic events.  It has been interesting watching the Olympics while traveling; each day that we are able to hear Olympics news it is biased by our location.  While driving through Canada we were listening to results of Canadian athletes, and we listened to some of the controversial Olympics moments involving Canadian teams.  The Canadian badminton team (Bruce-Li, Michelle Bruce and Alexandra Li) was thrust into the international spotlight after a host of other teams were disqualified, while the Canadian women’s soccer team lost their semi-final to the US by a questioned call to the ref.  Once we crossed the border these stories were never focused upon again, and this evening in particular the big story was that the US team had 40 athletes with Oregon ties (including Ashton Eaton, who had just won the gold in the decathlon).  Overall, we haven’t been able to keep up with the Olympics as much as we would’ve liked, but the local flavor definitely has made it more interesting when we are able.

_      Once again, we had the pleasure of packing up camp in the rain; we went to sleep with a nice lightning show above and assume the rain started shortly afterward.  The benefit of a rainy morning is that it got us on the road nice and early!  After a couple of hours we drove out of the rain and stopped at an overlook near Big Bar Lake to cook up some breakfast.  After passing through British Columbia’s agricultural district for a couple hours, we made it off Highway 29 and onto the Trans-Canada Highway to drive through the Fraser Canyon.  The Fraser Canyon is a narrow, rocky canyon cut by the Fraser River, and the two-lane road follows the path of the river while clinging to the side of the cliff.

_      Once through the Canyon we had one last Canadian stop in Chilliwack, by far our most successful shopping attempt of the trip.  We were able to do a last-minute stop for Canadian chocolates and beer not available south of the border, as well as some other errands that needed to be run.  We sped immediately from Chilliwack to Abbotsford, where we crossed the border for the last time into the Lower 48!  Another easy border crossing (where we did declare our Timbits, or donut holes from Tim Horton’s), we found ourselves in Sumas, Washington. 

_      Two hours of interstate travel later we stopped in Kirkland, Washington, to visit our friend Alison.  It was great to reconnect, and we took a walk through beautiful Kirkland past the Wilde Rover, the scene of past adventures of Charla and Allison.  Our destination this evening was just next door at Hanuman Thai Café, Charla’s first Thai food since leaving Thailand earlier this summer.  The prices were a little higher than Bangkok street-food (though also significantly lower than prices in Talkeetna), but Charla still approved of the cuisine.  Later that evening we headed into Seattle to visit Noelle, one of Chase’s friends from Talkeetna.  We quickly all became friends and slept soundly that night rocked by the waves of Lake Union.

_      We woke up among the Klondike gold rush-era facades of the Attic, as Freddie’s apartment complex is known among the residents.  Once again it was time for more blueberry pancakes using Charla’s blueberries from Talkeetna!  (Readers might have noticed that by now they’ve been smuggled across a second international border, so we should get around to eating them.)

_      We spent the rainy afternoon getting to know Freddie’s roommates and coworkers, and then ventured back into town for a stop at the local brothel.  The Red Onion was Skagway’s brothel back during the gold rush days of the 1890s (and a post office, telegram station, military barracks, etc., before becoming the museum it is today; hence, the 1940's and 50's pinups on the walls), and the fully-functional bar gives tours of the upstairs where the girls never missed a trick.  Today it costs $5 to get upstairs for 15 minutes, which is the exact same that it cost in 1899.

_      Before departing on the trip we had become accustomed to Burger & Brew at the West Rib Pub in Talkeetna on Friday nights, where you get a burger and a PBR for $6.95.  We were adrift in Skagway without our Friday night staple, until a whispered rumor sent us to Jewell Gardens for Friday night Hippie Hour where the burgers are $5 and the PBRs are $2.  Though an extra nickel changed hands, we were able to keep up the Friday night tradition!

_      After dinner, we started up a new Friday night tradition at the Skagway Brewing Company.  Well, perhaps not a tradition since it won’t happen again, but we all wish it was a tradition.  The BrewCo was offering 75 Cent Mystery Shot night, which we descended upon with Freddie and a couple of his roommates.  In addition to 75 cent shots, the BrewCo also had its signature Spruce Tip Blonde back on tap, a favorite of ours after sampling a brown and an IPA the night before.  After a wild time at the BrewCo (where we were the only table ordering mystery shots and also the only table being wild) we made a quick stop back at the Red Onion.  A lowly brothel by day, the RO turns into a dance club at night, luring in the likes of a bachelorette party all the way from Whitehorse.

       We started day three by packing up wet gear thanks to a Dawson morning rain shower.  Once we got all of our wet gear stowed away for the trip, we got to once again jump on the ferry for our final water crossing of the Yukon River.  The ladies at the Visitor Center directed us to the cheapest gas in town, at an industrial Alberta Fuels cardlock system in a mining part of town.  After figuring out how to use the most obscure cardlock system in the world, we were finally zooming out of town on the Klondike Highway.  We stopped for lunch at Moose Creek, a nice campground though it was lacking the running water that it had advertised.  Without rinsing our dishes we were back on the road again.  We continued on to Carmacks for a gas stop, and much more excitingly, a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Mint Chocolate bar that was hiding in the gas station!  We stopped to enjoy some morsels of chocolate at Little Fox Lake, the scene of a catastrophic forest fire in 1998.  The landscape is still charred and recovering to this day.
     A few miles down the road we arrived at Lake Laberge.  We were on an overlook, not quite a marge, but it was still appropriate to have a reading of Robert Service's “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”  After the dramatic reading, we took a look around to discover we weren’t merely at an overlook, but we had somehow ventured into a Public Use Quarry, complete with three Caterpillar 776Bs with keys in the ignitions!  However tempted we were to rally, we settled with a photo shoot.  (Who knows how good the steering would be on a vehicle whose tires are taller than the trusty Pilot?!)_

_      Our quarry was quite close to Whitehorse, which features the Yukon Brewery (“Beer Worth Freezin' For”).  Unbeknownst to us we had stopped in on International IPA Day, a day we should all be celebrating.  After a bit of sampling we decided on a growler of Discovery Honey Ale and bottles of Ice Fog IPA and Midnight Sun Espresso Stout.