I think the best way to describe Mardi Gras in Baton Rouge is with pictures....many many pictures. Enjoy! Spanish Town 2013!
Mardi Gras is Halloween times 1,000!! There were so many different crazy awesome costumes walking around it was like stimulation overload to the senses!
What would Mardi Gras be without a little bit of alcohol!
Charlie and I getting ready to start the festivities!
With Mardi Gras fast approaching I was eager to hunt down a parade or two to really get the full experience. When people think of Mardi Gras, it usually brings the image of New Orleans. Well it's not the only place they celebrate the holiday. When I got to Mobile, I wasn't expecting to find a parade. But I did. Actually Mobile, Alabama was where the first Mardi Gras celebration started! The first celebration was in 1703. Now that's a long time to be partying!
Parades for Mardi Gras start weeks prior to Fat Tuesday. There are various parades honoring different saints and mystic legends. Some have specific themes, like "RIP Hostess" in Baton Rouge, but that remains for the next blog. The parade in Mobil that I went to was the Mystic Stripers Society established in 1940. This parade showcased a variety of school mascots from the south. From high school to college. These parades are put on by "Krewes" with their own secret memberships. So everyone on a float in the parade wears a mask to keep their identity hidden. The culture of Mardi Gras is pretty interesting, I suggest reading more about it...or maybe just going to see for yourself!
Beads and trinkets were thrown at random into the huge crowds around me. I caught more than my fair share, including; beads, bouncy balls, roses, moon pies, cups, and even a spear! Yes a spear, made of foam.
The Stash
The town of Mobile itself was pretty interesting as well. There were neighborhoods with giant houses in victorian style and many with Mardi Gras decor. Beautiful flowers blooming in front lawns (in February!) and a large park in the middle of downtown's tall buildings. One of which lit up the Mardi Gras colors of green, purple, and gold.
I even got to see the Atlantic ocean (again) and it's port where the Carnival Triumph docked its crippled cruise ship in recent news. It was only days after I left that this occured.
Mobile, Alabama was a fun experience that I'm glad I got to enjoy. If you are ever passing through, see if you can find a small store across from the park in downtown that sells local artist's work. There is one artist that makes bowls out of melted Mardi Gras beads. A great idea for all the TONS of beads I collected!
It's so easy to take your health for granted. Until you remember what it's like to not feel your best you don't really think about it or try to maintain it. Well thanks to an unexpected surgery, I was able to remember how much I liked to plop down on a couch, or walk with ease, or buttoning the top part of my jeans for that matter!
After the surgery, I had to take it easy and wasn't able to really do anything but sit around waiting to heal. My cousin Tish and my mom who flew in from Colorado took good care of me though and I think I've been recoving fairly quickly. I was able to go to a birthday party for an adorable little boy though. Tish's son's little boy John Donovan had his first birthday party and that was exciting to be a part of.
One of the most exciting parts of my stay though was seeing a NASA space launch. I didn't realize how close to Cape Canaveral we were! It was a nighttime launch so it was perfectly visable. It looked like a bright ball of fire streaking upwards through the starry sky. Yeah, pretty magical! It's amazing to think how far we have come in terms of technology and what we can do with it.
When my stay with Tish was over, I headed down the road again toward Alabama. The farther north I got, the more farmland I went through. At one point I saw a sign that said it was the hometown of musician Ray Charles. Naturally, I had to make a stop there.
Greenville, Florida. The first impression I had was that the whole town was in shambles. Some people were living in old shack-like conditions. More than half the town seemed to be filled with abandoned buildings and stores. Vines and other growth were making their way through windows and wood.
The downtown area was just a handful of buildings and not all were in use.
Though the life in the town seemed to be sucked dry, there was still some beauty to be found. These houses that looked like shacks displayed magnificent rose bushes in the front yards with the most vibrant flowers blooming all over them. Spanish moss tangled through the branches of these rose bushes seemed to bring out the contrast between life and death of the plant.
The contrast between the old run down look of the town with these beautiful flowers seemed strange. But it gave this odd town some much needed life.
I wasn't able to find Ray Charles' childhood home in the town, but I was able to find a memorial park to him.
When I left the town, I was glad I had made the pit stop. I stayed in a small town called Madison in a hotel that night and could smell rain in the sky and manure from the cows across the street. For some reason I kind of liked those smells! It reminded me of simple living with no worries. The rest of north western Florida was mostly farmland except for Tallahassee, and until I got to Mobile, Alabama there wasn't too much excitment.
I was getting ready for Mardi Gras...and no surgery could stop me!
Well, I was able to see parts of Florida I expected to see, like the beach, and some I didn't expect, like the hospital.
Daytona Beach
When I first got to Florida I stopped in Daytona Beach. And can I just say, I felt like I had time traveled back into the 1980's! I saw mullets galore and overly tanned bleach blonde girls wearing neon cut off shirts. It was actually kind of comical and fun to see. I don't really know what else I was expecting to see in a town surrounded by race car fans. I was able to even see the Daytona track to make my trip to this city complete. Ok, well I saw the outside of the stadium. I parked in a Walmart across the street for the night and listened to the race cars do their time trials.
After Daytona I continued on to see a relative of mine, Tish, that lived near Melbourne, FL. She is my grandmother's neice, so to make the story less complicated we just say we are cousins. Anyway, I had planned to stay with her about a week. We were going to go to the beach, and St. Augustine, and even a Willie Nelson concert! But there were other plans in store for me that I was not aware of.
One day after breakfast with Tish and her family my right side began to cramp up like I've never felt before. I shut myself up in a bathroom stall and tried to will the pain to go away. Of course that didn't work and I even threw up because of how painful it was. Tish convinced me to go to a hospital and I really couldn't protest too much. After what seemed like an incredibly long time of ultrasounds, cat scans, and pain medication they packed me up into an ambulance to take me to another hospital that was larger and had more expertise for what they thought it might be. I couldn't really enjoy the ride even with the meds. Then again who really enjoys riding in an ambulance?
Once I got to the hospital, they did more tests and determined it was a twisted ovary caused by a very large cyst. It had cut off all blood supply to the organ. The next morning it became clear that the only option I really had was to have the ovary removed. Surgery was really not what I was expecting when I got to the sunshine state. But by the time they were ready to operate I just wanted it to be over with because whatever pain meds they were shooting me up with wasn't helping as much as you'd think it would.
Long story short, the surgery went well and I recovered pretty quickly all things considered. I spent a couple of nights in the hospital and my mom even flew in from Colorado to help Tish out with the "motherly caring". Thanks mom and Tish! I wasn't able to see the Willie Nelson concert, but my mom went in my place. I know why she really came down to Florida. For the beautiful weather and Willie Nelson!
Anyway, the point is, I was ok and very lucky that if it was going to happen at least it was with a caring family by my side and a nice place to recover.
It's been almost three weeks now, and I'm happy to report that everything is almost back to normal. I'm not able to sleep in the back of my car anymore for now, but the hotels have been comfy. Good excuse right?!
Florida showed me some great hospitality when I needed it most. Thank you to the amazing staff at the hospital that cared for me and for my cousin Tish and her family for helping me out and being so nice and accommodating!
That's not the end of my trip to Florida though. Don't think I didn't have some adventure! Well, an adventure not involving surgery anyway.
Savannah in one word is..."charm". Entering into the city's Historic District was like walking back into the past. It is a lavish southern town with a remarkable history. First established in 1733, Savannah has been through war (American Revolution, and Civil) and ruin, to peace and preservation. The Historic District was restored to its former glory and in doing so became a place unlike any other. Countless movies have been filmed there, including Forest Gump with Tom Hanks, Something To Talk About with Julia Roberts, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with John Cusack and Kevin Spacey, to name a few. Famous figures in history have lived in and done great things in this city. Juliette Gordon Low, for example, was the founder of the Girls Scouts of America. She started the girl scouts in 1912 in a carriage house in back of the Low house. Johnny Mercer, the famous lyrisist writer of over 1,000 songs grew up in Savannah. One example of his many famous songs is Moon River, which is a beautiful song.
However, my first thought of this song goes straight to Chevy Chase in Fletch.
When we came into the city it just so happened to be Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We watched as a parade marched on by and then proceeded to take a tour of a museum.
Where we got to see the bench Tom Hanks sat on and told his story in Forest Gump.
Proceeding along the streets of Savannah we saw incredible buildings, all with a history and unique character.
River side and cobblestone
One of the many squares in the Historic District
We saw the Mercer Williams house, the scene of the murder in the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Recently finishing up the novel, I have to say it was a great read! I recommend it, or at least the movie if you don't like reading.
Another great read is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. A building associated with the book, the pirate house, was built in Savannah in 1754 and was the inspiration for that story.
The Pirate House
The "haunted" Sorrel-Weed house (built in 1840)
Luxorious steps leading to the Ballastone Inn
Numorous celebrities have chosen to stay in this small but lavish looking inn.
The Six Pence Pub
Appeared in one of the scenes in the movie Something To Talk About with Julia Roberts.
Of course me being the oddball that I am, I had to visit the cemetery for a beautifully creepy picture. It was a very old cemetery with most being graves from the yellow fever epidemic in 1820.
Tybee Island lighthouse
My final stop in Georgia was only a couple of miles outside of Savannah to a small island called Tybee island where I visited an old lighthouse and white sand beaches.
I really did fall in love with the city of Savannah. Not that that's hard to do, nor will I ever be the last to say that. If you ever feel like traveling to Georgia, consider visiting here. It's just one of those places you have to see to believe. You won't regret it.
~Kelsey P.
Next up, my trip to Florida takes an unexpected turn...
