Louisiana through Arizona

We've seeing a lot of new areas lately. We left the snow of WV behind

and ventured south. Our first stop was Chattanooga where we saw a Erich and Emily from this summer at Roger's. But we woke up to rain, so we bailed. We headed south and covered Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi (first time there! Nothing interesting on I-59S. Oh, except, I swear a poultry truck somewhere ahead of us had a hole in it because the over half of the roadkill looked like white chickens), and Louisiana. We checked out a bayou
Early the next morning we decided to check out a scenic route that we hoped would let us see a couple more swamps (and maybe an alligator!?) and a beach! Turns out, the only free way (as in, not a boat tour) to see swamps is driving down the freeway.



The beach road had pretty fields, swamp land, spanish moss, and lots of refineries lining it



We finally found a boardwalk through a swamp
but it still wasn't as amazing as the I-10 corridor


We really thought we might see an alligator in this swamp. We hugged the middle of the wide-enough-for-a-car trail.
Alas, we only saw a couple of these
On to Texas! We crossed 5 states in 1 day, but it took us 5 days to cross this one state. Here's a sunset over Houston. Possibly the biggest city in the world

Austin, Texas is known for it's amazing music scene, and, I learned, for it's food culture of eating food from foodmobile trailers. They were all over! Mexican food, hot dog stands, thai food, diner-on-wheels, etc. Also, their parks are nice. A lot of water for the desert




and some cool limestone formations



but proof that it is, in fact, desert. And proof that the desert loves
we climbed a couple days

This is DanDee the sock monkey. He's coming with us on the trip. And Evan! We stayed with him while we were visiting. We learned that he has a beautiful mullet


Then it was on to El Paso, where we went to Hueco Tanks State Historical Park. We've been here before, and we didn't take a lot of pictures, but here's one of a really brave bird. The other thing in the picture is my leg and foot


Arizona came next.We went to Cochise Stronghold outside of Tucson. It was pretty cold and windy, so we didn't stay long. We'll be back though. Here's some cacti and other nature shots



even though it's a multipitch route climbing area, Micah finds bouldering everywhere


Then we headed off to California (where we are now), but along the way, we checked out the Saguaro National Park. Here's one
and some other Sonoran Desert plants



we've already got some good California shots, but we'll be in this state for almost the whole month. More when we leave the state!
Love,
Stella

PS Favorite conversation overheard in AZ
Cool Guy in Green Shirt: where are you from?
Micah: West Virginia
CGIGS: do you climb at Cooper's? I know some Pennsylvanians who go there to climb
Micah: who do you know in PA?
CGIGS: do you know Chet?
Micah: yeah! I used to climb with him a lot!
CGIGS: do you know Micah?
Micah: ... what?