Deep South Roadtrip 2009: Introduction

So, the roadtrip evolved out of two separate events that happened to be one week apart in very different areas of the country, and also about as far as possible from where we live. Carrie, the maid of honor in Ben and Jess's wedding, and Brian Baum, the best man, who many of us have gotten to know over the years, planned a secret bachelor/bachelorette party for the bride and groom down in Savannah, where they live. They basically invited anyone and everyone, on the condition that no one spill the beans beforehand. Dan and I were invited, and since I felt bad about not being able to attend the bridal shower, I sort of hunkered down and tried to figure out how we could get there without spending enormous amounts of money. The problem was that Brian and Christy's wedding was in Houston the following weekend - actually, we were scheduled to fly in on Thursday. There was no way that we were going to go to Savannah, fly back to California and then go back to Texas four days later. No thanks. We toyed with the idea of heading up to DC for a few days, and then I started looking around at other options. Recently, I've decided that I want to visit all 50 states - and I realized that I'd never been to Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana. And then one day I found a SUPER cheap deal on a one way rental car, to use all the way from Savannah to Houston, and just sort of booked it without having any other plans...good thing Dan is flexible, and that we usually fly on Southwest, who doesn't charge you extra to change your flights (which is really awesome, if you think about how much you pay for that crap on other airlines) As we talked about what we wanted to do, and where we wanted to go, we decided to: ~Fly into Jacksonville Friday night and drive up to Savannah (2 hours of driving) for surprise party, stay through the weekend ~Leave Savannah on Monday, drive to Mobile AL to spend the night (8 hours of driving), stopping in Macon and Montgomery for some tourism-lite en route ~Visit the USS Alabama in Mobile on Tuesday morning, and drive to New Orleans (2 hours of driving), stay until Thursday morning ~Leave New Orleans, drive to Baton Rouge, do a drive through tour, and head on to Houston (about 6 hours of driving) ~Hang out in Houston, attend wedding, have various good times and fly back to Cali on Sunday (I know that our plans totally just made my mom have convulsions) Honestly? It was rad. The whole thing. We didn't even kill each other about directions, parking, whatever have you - because usually when Dan and I fight, it's in the car. But yes, it was totally worth the time, money and hours in the car. 3 new states off the list!* Tomorrow's post: Savannah, with Franklin's pictures. Because Dan and I get lazy whenever Franklin pulls out his camera, as his photos will inevitably be better than ours. *States count as visited if you obviously stop there OR drive through them. Layovers at an airport in that state do not count. I have 24 left to go. How many states have you visited?