(Prior article is right here! But no prior knowledge is required. I’m just armchair traveling the country in book form, after doing in in cars this year. Join in the travels!)
In this segment of the trip I was in the Deep South, and wow it was HOT! It was only May on this leg, but again: SO HOT! (I took a picture of my car’s dashboard saying it was 91 degrees, which is just absurdly hot for my tastes.) So a lot of my car ideas involved keeping on the air conditioner, finding food I could keep that didn’t melt (no chocolate), and figuring out where to camp to avoid melting myself. (I’m much better at the frozen tundra of Minnesota winters than I am in Southern heat. My southern in-laws are constantly amused at my Yankee inability to function in the heat – and of course, they are not wrong.)
This week’s travel ideas are about finding places to sleep. It is really easy to spend a fortune on nightly lodging if you aren’t on top of this. And of course, there may be times you choose to stay in a fancy place: you deserve a treat, everything else looks terrifyingly filthy, etc. But in general, some careful thought here will give you more money.
For this segment of the trip, and for most of the whole thing actually, I leaned heavily on my KOA membership to find places to sleep. Sure, camping purists would not recognize this as “real” camping – but who cares what fussy people think anyway? It’s your trip! I think a KOA membership is $30/year, then you get 10% off each reservation.
The really handy thing is the app. I had an app for KOA, because I had a general plan for the trip; but I didn’t really know where I was going to be each night until later afternoon. (Flexibility is always nice!) I could make reservations for a KOA three or four hours down the road, get there after the office closed, pick up a key to my prepaid Kabin, and be all set. No need to check in, to show ID, or to deal with the drunks and loud baseball teams that always seem to inhabit cheap hotels. KOAs are often cheaper than acceptable cheap hotels in an area, and are QUIET and CLEAN – a much better choice for me in almost every situation.
I also stayed in some of their tent sites, and that is convenient, potentially fun, and super-cheap. (I will say, that in most KOAs, tents are a minor after-thought, so you are not going to have a great experience if it’s crowded.) But when it was so hot it was great to know I was going to have a night of electricity and air conditioning in a Kabin. Almost everyone else in a KOA is in a massive RV, and retired; so they don’t have time for the likes of tenting trash like me – all good! (I’m not a social traveler.)
You do have to bring your own bedding; but I was toting a couple of sleeping bags and pillows anyway, so that was no problem. Roll out your bag on the double bed, throw down a pillow, and you’re basking in luxury! Each Kabin looks the same as the cabins in the MN state parks: a double bed on one side of the room, and a set of bunk beds on the other. For a little extra money, some campgrounds have Kabins with a second room that has two sets of bunk beds. You can also get fancy, and start spending some serious money, to get nicer Kabins with kitchens and bathrooms. But I was only ever in a place for the time it took me to sleep and have a shower before I hit the road again; so small was just fine for me.
For sure, consider tenting on your trips!! It requires a little more equipment to haul, but for saving money – and often getting to see some lovely scenery – it is absolutely the best way to go! Don’t make it complicated. A tent, a sleeping bag, a pillow, a flashlight, and you’ve got the basics. You will be much happier if you get a pad to put under your bag; I started using a twin bed foam topper – aaaaahhhh….it feels so nice! Just enjoy the opportunity to be outside and enjoy the night in a way you rarely get to at home.
Louisiana
My only experience with Louisiana before this trip was visiting New Orleans. On my prior trips, I stuffed myself with raw oysters, steamed crayfish, muffaletta, and king cake, while wandering around dazed with admiration for the beauty of the city. That was fun; but this was different. I zipped across the northern end of the state, and didn’t see tons of cool things (highways do this!) but it was nice to stop at the rest stops down at the other end of the Mississippi river!
Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers
“Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.”
(Small note: the American Library Assn was the first big conference to be held in New Orleans after Katrina, after lots of the cancelled. Everyone was encouraged to come and bring money and spend lavishly. The library people complied. Libraries are lovely instruments of positive social justice action, even in unusual circumstances!)
Mississippi
I had never been here, though my husband spent a lot of his youth here. He went to the Univ of Southern Mississippi (go, Golden Eagles!) for his undergrad degree – along with fellow future Wisconsin resident: Brett Favre! (Sorry Vikings fans; he’ll always be a Packer to me.) It was SO HOT here!! And this was the one night on the trip that my Kabin AC let me down – I was miserable.
And while I don’t want to sound like, or to be, a terrible Yankee – as assuming everyone Southern is dumb and racist is clearly incorrect. (I’m literally married to the smartest person I’ve ever met, who, as I said, is from here.) But I have read a lot of terrible things about Mississippi, and was kind of nervous here. “Leading the nation in lynchings” is not a great stat, along with a bunch of other social problems here. And Southern poverty is not like Northern poverty. In my rural Midwestern childhood, “poor” was not having a TV, wearing hand-me-down, or Goodwill, clothes, and driving a car everyone hoped would hold together a few more months. Across the South, “poor” is not having shoes, not having windows, not having four standing walls on your house/shack. It’s a much more third-world type of poverty. I have no understand of the sociology here at all, and I’m sure people have looked at all of this; but it’s all shocking to my sheltered experience.
I definitely felt my middle-class-white-lady privilege here, and across the South. While I was worried about what I’d do if my car broke down, I was less worried that many people would be about being shot by the police, or others. (That was a more urgent worry for me in rural Idaho, lost on back-roads, surrounded by houses and cars flying “Don’t Tread On Me” flags – which I interpret as a straightforward “I’m Going To Shoot You Because I’m Crazy” symbol. Steer clear of these people when traveling.)
I’m a big proponent of not being afraid to travel, and not being afraid of being a woman alone – generally all will be just fine. But I’m also a fan of not being careless about safety. And it’s okay to notice that things are not okay. Hopefully that can serve as a spur to push us all to make better changes and choices, in making the world at least a little bit better for everyone.
Light in August, by William Faulkner
(Recommended by my husband, as “a very readable Faulkner”) “Light in August, a novel about hopeful perseverance in the face of mortality, features some of Faulkner’s most memorable characters: guileless, dauntless Lena Grove, in search of the father of her unborn child; Reverend Gail Hightower, who is plagued by visions of Confederate horsemen; and Joe Christmas, a desperate, enigmatic drifter consumed by his mixed ancestry. “
Alabama
I had also never been to Alabama. So many firsts here! I spent a lot of time here, driving hours north on the highway here. It was very cool to drive past the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL!
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, by Casey Cep
“Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell’s murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.
Sitting in the audience during the vigilante’s trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.
Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country’s most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity. “
Tennessee
This state is really beautiful, and has a lot of varied terrain! The Great Smokey Mountains! Clingmans Dome! Dollywood! I haven’t been to that last one, but I’ve been to the others; and I’ve driven across the state West to East, and back, many times, going between Chicago and Chapel Hill for school. There is a lot to see here!
The Atomic City Girls, by Janet Beard
“In November 1944, eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesn’t officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has sprung up in a matter of months—a town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions and reveal nothing to outsiders.
The girls spend their evenings socializing and flirting with soldiers, scientists, and workmen at dances and movies, bowling alleys and canteens. June longs to know more about their top-secret assignment and begins an affair with Sam Cantor, the young Jewish physicist from New York who oversees the lab where she works and understands the end goal only too well, while her beautiful roommate Cici is on her own mission: to find a wealthy husband and escape her sharecropper roots. Across town, African-American construction worker Joe Brewer knows nothing of the government’s plans, only that his new job pays enough to make it worth leaving his family behind, at least for now. But a breach in security will intertwine his fate with June’s search for answers.
When the bombing of Hiroshima brings the truth about Oak Ridge into devastating focus, June must confront her ideals about loyalty, patriotism, and war itself.”
Whew!!! So far we’ve armchair traveled through twenty states! Wow – we’re on a roll now! Thanks for traveling along with me; and I hope you are inspired to do some traveling with books – and to start thinking about some IRL traveling yourself.