On the Homestretch

01 Apr 2025

For our last stop we hit New Smyrna Beach, Florida before driving back up the coast. We visited a bunch of places we loved around town and were able to be in town for Dave's 33rd birthday, Sara's brother.

Our first stop of course had to be Breakers!

Unfortunately, we got caught by the drawbridge on the way.

Later that week we got together with the Cristine, Aron, Rachel, and Michael from the local running club to watch a Maryland Terrapins vs Florida Gators game during March Madness.

On Friday, everyone had flown in for Dave's Epic Bike and Bar 2025 so we went to Hollerbach's in Sanford, FL after we picked them up from the airport. They had live music! Moreover, we got Das Boot, which is a 2-liter boot of beer that you pass around the table until it's gone.

Saturday was the big day, Dave's Epic Bike and Bar 2025! 33 people joined Dave as we rode around town to different bars to celebrate his birthday. His mom even got shirts made special for the event. Happy Birthday Dave!

From there, it was time to pack up on Sunday, and drive home. Across the 22 states we drove through, we kept seeing crossing signs warning us about the wildlife we might see. Of course, there's the "black deer jumping" basically everywhere we went.

But as we traveled, we kept finding more and more unique crossing signs! So here's the collection we made on the trip.

But we've kept driving and at long last, welcome to Maryland!

We've finally made it home! In total, we traveled 10,622 miles in our car, with another 100 or so in a rental car in Hawaii. That's a daily mileage of 134 miles. We traveled 5,104 miles to and from Hawaii. And due to the auto-train booking snafu, we sadly clocked no train miles on this trip.

We were traveling for a total of 80 days. Of that, we managed to stay with friends or family for almost half of it at 35 days. Hotels we stayed at for 29 days, and camping just 16 days. Looking back, we probably would have camped an extra 5 days toward the beginning of the trip if we didn't have such extreme cold weather for the season.

This trip has been wonderful, but we're very happy to finally be home. This was a once in a lifetime experience, and we have been so fortunate to be able to go. If you ever get the chance to visit any of the parks or tour the country, you should definitely do it. Safe travels!

New Orleans

29 Mar 2025

On our way out of Boerne, TX, we passed by a field of Longhorn Cows pastured next to the road.

While escaping Texas was quite the ordeal, full of twists and turns and traffic, we did find a peaceful respite outside of Houston at a rest area with a wonderful set of tile murals and boardwalks.

But finally we arrived at New Orleans, Louisiana. We of course headed down to Bourbon Street to see if we could catch any Mardi Gras parades, but we only caught the tail end of one unfortunately. In brighter news, we asked a bar for jello shots and got huge syringes!

The next day was the hiking day. We walked down to grab beignets from Cafe Du Monde for breakfast. Then we walked back up to the street-car stop, taking that out to Audobon Park. There we walked a mile down into the Zoo, walked around the Zoo, and walked a mile back up to the street-car. Then we got off at First St, walked a mile back down to Abita Brewing Company, then half a mile back up to Joey K's restaurant for dinner, then another half mile to the street-car and finally a half-mile back down to the hotel. All told, we walked close to 20,000 steps that day.

So, first stop, beignets!

On our way to the zoo we passed quite a few trees full of beads from the Mardi Gras parades.

The park and zoo are both named Audobon after John James Audubon, a French-American naturalist and artist who moved to New Orleans in 1821. Audobon was renowned for his work documenting birds in the US and identifying 25 new species of birds. The zoo has a prominent statue of Audobon with notebook in hand.

Welcome to Audobon Zoo!

The zoo has several more bronze statues of wildlife throughout, with the grandest piece being the elephants and lions in the center of the central fountain.

The Zoo sported a variety of other animals, but the Sea Lions stole the show, as they were doing laps, with the other animals mostly just lazing or grazing.

And of course, the advertised Tortoises were not on exhibit, because Turtles hate Cory.

The Audobon Zoo also features an amazing Bayou exhibit, featuring Alligators, Turtles, Raccoons, Bobcats, Foxes, and Otters. Sara's favorite was by far the River Otter, but Cory was so excited to finally see some Turtles!

And the pièce de résistance, River Otters in all their glory!

We also caught a black-crowned heron visiting the otters!

We had to watch for gators on our way through the swamp.

Past the gators and through the woods, we spied a bobcat that got into the hen-house.

The fox was out and eyeing the hen-house too.

From there it was into the jungle, though Cory was dismayed to find out he was too tall for the Kid's Trail.

What we did find was a jaguar taking a nap on her birthday.

From there we went to investigate the nighttime exhibit, finding bats and prehensile-tailed porcupines who are nocturnal.

As we emerged from the dark caves we heard some whistling going on. We got closer and the sounds got louder. Closer still and they were deafening. The flamingos had a massive flock of black-bellied whistling ducks that had stopped by. The flamingos didn't seem very happy about it either. Even the emu several habitats away seemed non-plussed.

Off to the elephants and big cats!

From the Zoo we continued our walking tour to the street car. We even had to run to catch the car! We took it a few stops, then walked another mile back toward the river to visit Abita Brewing Company in their new New Orleans, LA location.

Finally we walked down to Joey K's for dinner where we had amazing food to round out our night of fun.

Our time in New Orleans was over and we still needed to get back to the East Coast, so we headed to Florida!