The Beginning of Blogging

I owe my inspiration to start a blog to Tess, my college roommate and adventurous traveler (so you can either thank or blame her). We both graduated from the College of Charleston in May and she, almost immediately, took off for Oz and is now recording her adventures on a blog. So in a few weeks time my brother, Davey, and I will be starting our own adventures in Costa Rica. As a Spanish and communications major, I figure I have some skills that might help us down there, and of course, we're escaping our college diplomas that are now taunting us from overly expensive frames on our walls. Every morning The New York Times tells me the job market isn't good and it's getting worse so instead of waiting around, we're escaping.

I lived in Charleston for four years of college, enough time for me to fall in love with city's southern charm. I had great friends in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, interesting college classes and a close proximity to bars. But in August my lease ran up, Kendall headed home, Tess left for Australia, and I stayed with my friend, Larrissa, sleeping in a G.I. Joe tent on her spare bed, while I worked to make some more cash before becoming officially jobless.

After a few weeks, I packed my life's possessions (three suitcases of clothes, a bag of shoes, three boxes of books, one box of (unused) cookbooks and kitchen supplies, a coffee maker, and a blender) and headed west, well, south, and then west.

I drove down to Bluffton, South Carolina and stayed with Kendall, my first college friend and future doctor, and stayed for two days. We went to her local farmer's market and loaded up on local peaches and scuppernones, variably spelled. Apparently scuppernones are a local grape, kind of like a muscodine, that grown in the southeast, or at least in Georgia. They have a tough, whitish skin, that you split open by pressing the grape between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, which gives way to the meat, kind of the texture of a peach. They're delicious, but watch out for the little seeds!

Next I went on to Atlanta. I stopped in Pooler, Georgia, first, though, to have lunch with Ruthie, a mom of a friend of a friend, long story, but afterwards, I went to Grego's drive-through liquor store off I95. If you're ever in that area, you have to stop and go through because a drive-through liquor store is something you can't miss! With some housewarming gifts of Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka added to my collection of traveling companions, I made my way to Atlanta (with armadillos on the side of the highway! In Georgia?!). I stayed with Cindy, another friend from college, and we enjoyed the beautiful bars of Buckhead as well as the Atlanta Farmer's Market where we tried aloe juice! My brothers and I have a long running joke about aloe, courtesy of the 80's surf movie The North Shore. The juice is actually pretty good, but the pulp is strange and kind of chewy. Does anyone remember the drink with jello bubbles in it, called Orbits, or something like that? Well, the pulp is like the jello bubbles.

So after that I made my up to Nashville to stay with Kate, my oldest friend in the world, or most long standing, she's only 22. I've never been to Tennessee and was so surprised at how pretty it was! We spent the night drinking sweet tea vodka, sneaking into graveyards, and catching up, of course. The next morning before I left, we went to Cracker Barrel. Kate is a lifelong Oregonian just recently transplanted to the south. Once we sat down and she looked over the menu, she looked up and said, "What are grits?" Now, I didn't know what grits were until I came to school in the south, but now that I know, I can't imagine life without grits, and that's not necessarily a good thing. For anyone who doesn't know, they're made of corn, I think, and are ground up into a Cream of Wheat look-a-like. The only way to really describe them is that they are... gritty. At best, you can put cheese on them, or just butter and salt. If you have to eat grits, though, the best way is with thick, creamy grits, laden with shrimp. Mmm... delicious.

Full with country fried breakfast, I got on the road for a long day of driving through western Tennessee and Arkansas. I reached Arkansas around sunset and was shocked at how pretty it is. Arkansas is one of those lost states that people forget when naming all the states. It's never a travel destination, or even a retirement destination, surprising since people seem to pick the quietest, flattest, places to retire in.

I ended in Corpus Christi, where my mom currently lives and works for the Red Cross. Corpus Christi is a weird little city that seems like it was once a popular destination for a lot more people than it ever sees now. There are big buildings and miles of coast, but no one in sight. We visited Mustang Island and South Padre as well and ate our hearts out on sights of white sand beaches and oil rigs.
After a few days I abandoned car travel for plane travel and flew to San Francisco to meet up with the rest of my family. It's a little more scenic here than the plains of southern Texas, but also a little cooler.