Voodoo, Hoodoo, Bears and Ju Ju.

It has been an amazing few days on our road trip and I thought I would share a few photographs from the last couple of days. Hope you enjoy!

The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum

Less of a Museum more of a house filled with the most intriguing, curious and fascinating collections I have experienced. It felt like I had entered the Mighty Boosh....

Joining up with the Historical Route 66 a couple of days later we met some amazing people who were full of southern hospitality. Where else could you walk into a shop looking for a patch and come out hours later with free candy, free shop merchandise and recommendations for where to have tea that night? - Jay, if your reading we went to Joe Tacos and the chillie rellenios were ace!

Our next destination was New Mexico- dubbed 'the land of enchantment'. It didn't take us long to see why! Here are just a few of the pictures we took.

Sunset over Santa Fe.

This photograph happened like this:

Aimee: 'Thats odd, there are leaves all over the floor'

Matt: 'I dont think they are leaves, they are climbing up the wall'.

Aimee: Runs

Matt: Proceeds to take pictures of said insect.

So, we park up at Sandia Mountain National Forest and I step out of the car to pay for the parking. The people in the car next to us wind down their window and say, in hushed tones 'Excuse me, there is a bear'. I turn around. So there is. Then I notice this sign;

Then I promptly get back in the car and lock the door.

Other than the amazingly cute bears, the park has some pretty impressive sights. Here is Matt enjoying some of them.

And so here we are, Gallup New Mexico. We just enjoyed dinner at the Ranch Kitchen and thought Lisa might enjoy this horse. I wonder if you can see what it is standing on??

Cadillac Ranch

Cadillac Ranch, a set on Flickr.

The Cadillac ranch just outside Amarillo, Texas, is beautiful, fun and like any great artwork gave the old grey matter a good kick. There are some great articles on the web about the history of the art work (see bellow) so I will keep my rambles brief and let the images do the talking.

It was the response of the other visitors to the artwork that I found most interesting as Aimee put it "people who have never held a spray can before letting out their inner Banksy ". Graffiti of the Cadillacs is quietly encouraged and there was a large supply of half empty cans around that most people were using to leave their own personal mark. Watching people cover themselves in paint and the small boy getting told off for trying to copy what his dad was doing was very funny. We didn't add anything ourselves (mainly because we didn't want to stink of paint fumes for the next 4 hours in the car). I was left thinking about the things that we leave behind in all forms after we visit a place. At the Cadillac ranch people leave behind empty discarded paint cans littering the site. The paint cans might be an hours work for someone to clean up each day but to me it was just a reflection on how we treat a lot of monuments some of which are less easy to clean up. On a more positive note we saw people leaving behind their inhibitions and a small piece of an ever changing artwork; here everyone is coming together to make something.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2220
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Ranch
http://www.texastwisted.com/attr/cadillacranch/

travel food

Travel food, a set on Flickr.

As quite a lot of you have probably gathered by now, I enjoy my food. And one of my favourite things about traveling is experiencing different styles of cooking. So I decided that as we travel I would take a picture of every meal we eat (provided I remember to take a picture before I eat it all). As requested here is our journey so far, expressed through the medium of food. ENJOY!!

Edit: As some may have noticed we had a bit of trouble with the food photos but they should be nicely fixed now

New Orleans + Luxury cinema

It's our last night in New Orleans before we move on tomorrow so I thought I would use the excellent web connection to give a quick update.

A sample of the shop signs in the French Quarter

The iron balconies are beautiful and often covered in plants or Mardi Gras decorations

We have done some serious exploring of the French Quarter which has a really interesting atmosphere full of artists, musicians (mainly jazz) and good food. There are some tourist traps (with a very New Orleans twist) but turn round the next corner and you find a group of locals enjoying some street music or fresh coffee. The party spirit even invaded us last night as we had some very brightly coloured, highly alcoholic, iced cocktails from a washing machine (if I remember rightly the bar was called the Voodoo Lounge but it is a bit of a blur).

There is one thing that has put a bit of a crimp in our jazz appreciation, the heat. Since we have arrived the temperature has been in the high 90's and is still 91 degrees at 2130. Our poor british constitutions are not made for this heat so we have been finding indoor activities to get some air conditioned relief.

Which leads nicely to the second part of the title, the luxurious cinema we visited this afternoon. High back leather seats, in seat food and drinks service, gourmet food, call button. Not that we used any of the above but it was very different to a friday night on Broad Street having pop corn thrown at you and having your view obscured by someone texting in the next row, the security guard on the door with the taser would put a stop to that. Off to get some rest now lets see where tomorrows road leads us (I hear rumours that the temperature has been hitting 100 in Texas, ouch).

Aimee trying not to evaporate in the morning sun

The route across the USA in visual form

I always get round to things eventually. Here is a map of our route across the United States. When I know where we are going in New Zealand and Asia I will add them as well.

View USA trip in a larger map

On the road USA

On the road USA, a set on Flickr.

Finally managed to get the best of my images so far organised so I have started a flickr set. I will keep adding to it as we travel across the States.