on the road to nashville

I honestly thought I was done with these sorts of road trips.

I think for real this time though, this will be the last one.

Of course I said that last time when I helped Ray move to Colorado. And actually before that, when I helped Sam move back from New Jersey, I thought that was the last one.

But here I am again driving across country helping a friend move. This time it’s Jiro moving to Tennessee. Ironically it’s almost the route is almost the same as when I drove it with Sam, only in reverse. Also ironic is that our first stop was to visit Sam in San Diego, along with Paul, who’s also in San Diego, and Stanley, who lives in Irvine.

One of the stops in San Diego was to a sea cave in La Jolla. It was recommended by Mr Paul Liu, and it didn’t disappoint. I think next time I’m out here I’d wanna rent a kayak to go explore these caves from the ocean side.

Also in La Jolla is the Torrey Pines Gliderport. This is something I probably wouldn’t try– I’m too afraid of heights to jump off a cliff, but it’s cool to watch other people do it.

There’s a trail from the glider port down to the beach below. The beach, we found out, is a nude beach. We walked around there from the nude part to the more family friendly part of the beach.

San Diego’s always awesome, but more than the touristy stuff it was awesome to see old friends again.

From San Diego we headed east out of California, across Arizona and into New Mexico. We stopped a night in New Mexico and visited Carlsbad Caverns in the morning. The size of this cave is amazing– there’s a trail that starts as switchbacks outside the mouth of the cave and then goes in a mile and down 750 feet.

There’s all sorts of interesting rock formations in the cave, mostly vaguely phallic shaped, but there’s also one that looks strangely like a boob.

At the bottom of the trail is the big room, a huge open area with many interesting cave formations. There is a little souvenir area there where you can take the elevators back to the top.

From New Mexico we drove through Texas, stopping one night in a small German town called Fredericksburg, and one night in Austin. Then we spent one night in New Orleans and a night in Memphis, before arriving in our destination of Nashville.

The cool thing about all of these towns is they all have very lively music scenes. Austin has Sixth Street, where the highlight for me was Pete’s Dueling Piano bar. Unfortunately my phone ran out of battery so I didn’t get a picture there. New Orleans has Bourbon street, where there are some cool places to sit and listen to jazz. Memphis has Beale street, which is famous for rock and roll and the blues. Nashville has Broadway, for country and rock. It was a cool experience, probably something I wouldn’t have experienced if I weren’t doing a cross country drive with a friend.

Another thing to experience during a drive through the South is the food. I’m especially a big fan of the food in New Orleans, which is probably obvious because half of these food shots are from that city. The New Orleans food shots include Po Boys, smoked oysters, a Sazerac cocktail (which was apparently invented in New Orleans), coffee and beignets from Cafe Du Monde, and gumbo. In Memphis we hit up a barbecue joint, where I had a rib and fish combo, and also chicken and waffles from Miss Polly’s. At Nashville we had hot chicken from Hattie’s hot chicken, and my last meal of the trip was a pulled pork platter at the airport.

I think this is my last cross country roadtrip to help a friend move. For real this time. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them, I do, and probably would do one again if the opportunity came up. It’s that I am close to running out of friends that are doing these cross country moves.

Anyways, best of luck to Jiro at Vanderbilt. It’s been fun, and thanks for the great (and fattening) experience driving cross country.