Days 96 & 97 - Lazy Days

Author - Grant
From – Dauphine Island, Alabama
To – New Orleans, Louisiana
Via – Mississippi (we love those three state days)
Miles Driven - 147

Day 96 Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157613550566887/
Day 97 Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157613579298876/

Days 96 and 97 have to be combined because, by design, precious little happened to fill more than a couple of paragraphs of writing. Well, I’m writing this in my first minute of typing and have probably underestimated the amount of tangential waffle I’ll spout along the journey but if it’s world record breaking, life changing experiences you like reading about then try guinnessworldrecords.com as continuing to read this will just make you snoozy.

Day 96 was our extra day on Dauphine Island taken solely because someone told us the weather was due to be nice so we should stick around. So we did. And it was. But such nice weather doesn’t induce the desire to overly exert oneself beyond the now almost daily run. Hence, aside from the one hour trot along the sandy bike lane that stretches from tip to tip of this sleepy island, the remaining 15 hours of consciousness were spent either strolling through town reciprocating the waves of every local we encountered (who clearly thought we had moved here permanently because we are constantly accompanied by a dog), reading (or, more accurately, snoozing) on the beach or, my personal favourite, eating.

Speaking of eating, like the kid in the old Bisto Gravy adverts, my nose started twitching a few seconds after arriving on this island thanks to the unmistakable aroma of slow burning Hickory and Mesquite. No need for GPS to find the source as my nostrils mimic Divining Rods except that tender, smoked meat is the reward rather than poxy, calorie-free water. Introducing the unimaginatively named Smokey’s Island Barbeque which is literally a shack with one portal to take orders from salivating meat hunters and another to let out plumes of smoke that have already weaved their magic. The menu is on a wipe-clean memo board and represents what the Pit Master fancied chucking in the smoker the previous night but, thankfully, pulled pork is an ever present. I arrived in the middle of the Sunday afternoon rush (another guy and his dog had just ordered) and I feel they will be telling tales of the day they had more than one order in the space of one hour for many moons to come. I’m definitely buying a copy of tomorrow’s Dauphine Island Gazette to see if I made the front cover. Mistakenly given the power by Kate to order whatever I fancied, I walked away with two bulging arms full of large pulled pork sandwiches, beans, coleslaw and a hot-dog which I ordered at the last second like a drunk tags a chaser onto his bar order. One thing I have discovered about myself is that I am a dry BBQ kind of guy as I think that the subtle flavours taken on by the meat during its 15 hour smoke are drowned out by whatever sauce they chuck over at the last minute. Alas, this was a wet BBQ kind of place and asking a wet BBQ pit master to omit the sauce would be about as insulting as asking for half an hour on his sister so I just kept schtum. The meat was, as expected, super tender and whilst Kate found the big globules of fat a bit too much, I was in pig fat heaven. Yep, there was too much pungent, vinegary sauce for me but it was mighty tasty nevertheless. I fear that if I lived on this island, I would eat here so regularly that my body would start to develop a distinctive red smoke ring that would make me wholly unsuitable for organ donorship.

Nothing more interesting to report that night as we went to the pub where Kate clearly spiked my drink because she went on to beat me at Trivial Pursuit for the first time in recorded history. In my defense (and I always have one), her luck with the dice was enough to have her burned at the stake just 50 years ago. Revenge will be swift, sweet and humiliating.

And so onto Day 97 where we stirred with little rush, bid farewell to our hosts (including the crazy motel cleaner who had fallen in love with Molly but whom Molly clearly thought was a dog butcher) and hit the road finally bound for New Orleans, a destination that we seem to have been on the verge of arriving in, without success, for just over a week. Our only real goal today was to find accommodation which was given extra importance by the fact that we are staying in one place for a whopping 17 nights as we’re staying for Mardi Gras on 24th Feb and intend to somehow keep ourselves busy in the mean time. As such, rather than the usual haphazard approach to choosing lodging, we decided to phone round a few places, see a few rooms and find somewhere with a kitchen that I won’t be unleashing a private torrent of abuse at within two days (my patience is generally getting worse as Kate will testify to). Generally prices at least double over the Mardi Gras period so we’d already settled at being a bit outside town. We agreed to stay in a studio room at Extended Stay America but it wouldn’t be ready for an hour so we decided to have a mooch around some other hotels. The one opposite didn’t take dogs but the receptionist ran out after Kate to recommend a place down the road which is cheaper, cleaner and generally nicer than our chosen place and it is from this place (The Sun Suites) that I now type this blog. Don’t get me wrong, it’s no palace but I was a bit blown away by this lady’s (Dee, by the way) kindness and hence she’s getting a box of chocolates later today because that’s what I was taught to do.

Having access to a kitchen for the first time in an age, after a miserable jog in the dark and the rain we stayed in and I attempted, with some success, to replicate the Baja Chicken Enchilada soup that we had in Hattiesburg. Spicy soup, a bottle of plonk and an early night to give us energy to properly explore New Orleans the following day and, hopefully, try to figure out what the hell we’re going to do to keep us busy for the next two weeks...