We arrived in New Orleans after driving through some tree-lined avenues with beautiful old colonial houses. This was a pleasant surprise as in most of the American cities we've been through you can come across some pretty dodgy neighbourhoods! We were a bit dazed when we hit the centre......being in a big city after a few days of the rural Deep South was a bit of a shock....but we dumped the car and wandered down to the Mississippi where there was one of the huge, iconic paddlesteamers moored on the river bank, along with 3 navy frigates.
We had a typically Louisiana dinner of fried catfish, shrimp and creole rice sitting outside in the lovely heat and wandered through the French Quarter of the city. There was lots of jazz being played in the bars and restaurants and we stopped to listen to a bluegrass band playing on the street. We walked down Bourbon street.....which is pretty much as it would have been in the 1800s we imagine. As there were 3 navy ships in port the street was filled with sailors chatting to the "local ladies" (one of the ships was Royal Navy....disgraceful!), loud music and drunken people staggering out of the many bars! We had planned on staying in New Orleans for a couple of nights but we decided it was a bit big and noisy so we headed on out of the city that night and stopped in a small town over the border in Mississippi for the night.
The next day we crossed the border into Alabama and stopped at the visitors centre to pick up some information. We were greeted with this defiant state motto.....
To avoid the massive city of Birmingham, Alabama, we took a cross-country route and stopped in Talladega National Forest for the night. We camped by a beautiful lake and enjoyed the luminous acrobatics of the local fireflies once it got dark.
The next morning we set off for Northern Alabama and stopped at a local drive-thru for breakfast. We were clearly now in truly foreign territory as, not only were we the ethnic minority, but the accent had become so strong that we could not be understood and we could certainly not understand our Southern friends!
We continued through rural Alabama, heading towards the Unclaimed Baggage Centre. This phenomenon is a huge thrift store filled with unclaimed lost airline baggage from all over the US. Sarah had seen this mentioned in a travel book and had a bargain in her sights! The centre has been featured on a number of American TV programs and has grown exponentially over the years. Sarah treated herself to a $14 outfit of jeans and a top and John replaced his knackered sandals for 99c. It should be mentioned that we did not find the $10 laptop or other bargains that we had hoped for....but Sarah thoroughly enjoyed herself anyway!
Crossing yet another state border into Georgia, we made it to Chatsworth for the night. We parked up our Chevrolet Sonic amongst the pick-up trucks and headed to a restaurant entitled "Pork and Beans".....the clue is in the name and we had a fine dinner of southern cooking consisting of pork and beans (and a multitude of other things including fried chicken, sweetcorn, cornbread and coleslaw).
We were very close to Amicalola Falls State Park and, based on our calorie intake of the previous evening, some hiking was in order! We headed to the park and the start of the Appalachian Trail. John was very grateful that he was dropped off at the top of the falls at the start of his 2008 hike as the climb up many, many steps following the falls was pretty tough, even without a full pack! We had the dubious pleasure of seeing 2 very venomous Copperhead snakes, one of which was guarding one of the bridges on the way up the falls....thankfully a rather brave/foolhardy local borrowed one of John's hiking poles to remove a very angry Copperhead and send him off into the bushes (only after he had tried to strike the guy with his venom-dripping fangs.....).
On reaching the top of the falls, we found, somewhat to our disappointment, a carpark! However we carried on hiking on the Appalachian Trail access route through the woods. We sat down to a fine picnic of BBQ chicken saved from our previous night's meal (it is quite normal in the US to ask for a takehome box for any of the remaining enormous dinner you are unable to consume there on the spot). It wasn't til we were halfway through scoffing our delicious chicken that we realised the aroma was probably permeating most of Georgia, and attracting all bear life from miles around! With this thought we hiked rapidly back to the start of the trail.
On leaving Amicalola State Park, we crossed the border into North Carolina and stopped for the night in a small town called Murphy. Our car was due back in Knoxville the next day and we thought we were plenty close enough to be there by lunchtime. We set off from Murphy, taking the 129 north towards Knoxville. This turned out to be a very famous North Carolina road, called the Tail of the Dragon, which winds its way through the Smoky Mountains. It's so famous that even John has heard of it because it is so popular with bikers and sports car enthusiasts. Feeling somewhat out of place in our Chevrolet Sonic, we "raced" along at 35mph (the actual speed limit). We were pretty embarrassed to be photographed several times by the local paparazzi who position themselves along the road taking pictures of the cars and bikes for purchase on their websites. Needless to say we have not spent the $6 to purchase our photo that was nestled nicely between superfast sports bikes, corvettes, mustangs and the like!
Due to our slow progress along this windy road we were somewhat late returning our hire car.....but pleading British ignorance of the roads we got our fine for being late rescinded.
We spent another night in Knoxville and caught a complicated series of buses (designed by Sarah to be as cheap as possible!) to Charlottesville in Virginia.
