live. work. dream.

Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we’re livin’ got us feuding
Like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry’s train songs
And blue eyes cryin’ in the rain, out in Luckenbach Texas
Ain’t nobody feelin’ no pain …

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Perhaps you can help us settle a little debate here in the LiveWorkDreamer.

After traveling for nine months across the entire United States, René believes the most amazing thing we have seen was the Cathedral of Junk in Austin, Texas.

I on the other hand, tend to agree with our friends Randy and Sonja – who René dragged to see this obscurity, in the rain, after they flew all the way from San Francisco to visit us – that it isn’t much more than a big pile of crap!

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Traveling down the East Coast and into Florida, we found it best to stay on the Interstates, which was a switch. We hate interstates, preferring the Blue Highways and backroads of America instead. But once we left Florida, it was like the skies and the roads opened up simultaneously, and we could breathe again. The backroads were once again our domain.

We moved past New Orleans, to check out Acadiana, the Cajun area of Louisiana. Thanks to the suggestion of fellow RVers on RV.net, we traveled along down rural Highway 82 from Lafayette to Texas, along a scenic route through farming territory and wildlife reserves.

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We traveled through small towns like Abbeville, saw the effects of Hurrican Rita, and ended up spending the night at one of our fine Passport America campgrounds, Audobon Acres. The campground is just four RV sites with full hookups, on property owned by Joe Tessier, a native of the area whose Cajun family has resided there for generations.

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I’m not one to join another RV club for the sake of getting a sticker to put on my rig. But I sure wish we had joined Passport America months ago!

We had seen the Passport America club signs at campgrounds but didn’t think twice about it until recently.

A fellow fulltimer explained how much we could save, so we went for it.

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We’ve been hearing a lot of good music lately. So much that I’ve added a new Musicamericana Video Playlist featuring samplings of the local music scenes we’ve soaked up along our way.

But I promised Sonja I would post this movie from our dinner at Artz Rib House in Austin where they hooked up with us for some good food and good fun.

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One of the best parts about going on the road is having your eyes opened up to the realities that exist beyond your own little corner of the world. So when it came to New Orleans, it was one thing for me to hear secondhand reports about the state of affairs in the city from the comforts of my home. But to walk through the rubble that remains, to talk to those who are trying to piece their community back together, was another thing altogether. This is why we travel.

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For our visit to New Orleans, we boondocked on the BioLiberty compound down on Bayou Liberty in Slidell, Louisiana.

This is where our old Humboldt friend Gordon Soderberg now calls home.

Living full-time in his RV, he has established quite an impressive green enterprise with the help of a local dentist who owns the property.

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As I previously mentioned, artists are flocking to New Orleans. My new artist friend, Skinny Chef (aka Mary Kate), likened the city to a blank slate, a place where great art is rising from the ashes of Katrina. We met Skinny Chef and her partner Flux Rostrum, down on the Bio Liberty compound in Slidell. They are moving to NOLA, to further her art, and expand Flux’s mobile broadcasting studio’s capabilities.

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René has always had a hard time lighting the pilot for our Maytag RV oven. I never had a problem, so I always gave her a hard time in return.

Then one day I couldn’t get it to light.

After far too many times of kneeling before the Magic Chef, praying that it would light, we decided to call for service since it was still under warranty. But not before I dissected and reassembled the pilot assembly and combed the owner’s manual for assistance. There was none.

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I started out this trip behaving like a spoiled little West Coast snot, like a character out of that famous New Yorker drawing that shows a map of the U.S., with the Left Coast and the East Coast, and nothing in the middle. How wrong that is, and what an ignorant turd I was for falling for it.

The middle of this country has the nicest, most down to earth people we’ve met, and some of the most creative. And since arriving in the South, we’ve witnessed more talent, and met more artistic individuals here than anywhere else. Maybe it’s because they’re at arm’s reach here, whereas on the coasts, the artists and musicians I’ve met have gigantic egos, stick to their own kind and don’t make an effort to blend in with the masses, unless it’s to try to make a buck.

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