I will Play for Gumbo

I Will Play For Gumbo
April 28, 2007
11:24 Indiana/ 10:24 Alabama



Busy day today. Really odd- for a driving day that is. I woke up as we were driving through the very last of Nashville. Anguiano-you’re a nutball. Ya know how you said if we drove through Nashville we would see the Rascal Flatts tour bus? Ya. I thought you’d remember that. Well Einstein, I hate to pop your bubble or anything, but it was simply a semi truck with a Rascal Flatts ad on the side of it. Not the tour bus. My parents thought it quite funny.
After we passed through Nashville I saw one of the most shocking things in my life; the Tennessee river. It was blue!!!!! Seriously, it was beautiful. There were five speedboats flying across this gorgeous blue water. Why is it blue? You might ask. Well, maybe because they don’t dump there poop in it! Geez. It was just wrong. We have three rivers in our city and we dump our poop in them. Arg. Ok. Moving on to something else.
If you remember last year, around this time, we happened to blow a tire in Alabama traveling from Florida to California. Well, Alabama isn’t a good state for tires. We blew another one. My mom was driving and suddenly there was that familiar popping/exploding noise. Luckily, there was a tire place at the next exit, about five miles ahead. We slowly got back on the road and made it there, only to find out that they were out of the tires we needed. Swell.
While we were there, we also discovered that when the tire blew, the piece of rubber flew back, catching the sewage pipes and loosened them. Then, when my dad went to drain the sewage, the sewage pipes completely fell apart, spilling “stuff” all over the ground. Use your imagination. And this is just another example of how the movie RV relates to our every day life.
We found another tire mart and they fixed us up in a jiffy. While they were repairing the tires, what else can you do but wait? Or shop. So my mom, Darby, Katty and I went to a nearby strip mall to shop for a swim suit for my mom, which she forgot. The tires were on again in about an hour and a half, and we were back on the road.
Alabama is absolutely GORGEOUS! Wild flowers grow on the sides of the highway, making Alabama one of the best smelling states I’ve been to. I’m not joking. Those flowers are extremely aromatic.
But, Alabama does have one, not so pleasing trait. Road kill. Yeppers, I saw around 22 armadillos, 4 raccoons, 1 turtle, and 4 or 5 unidentified objects. And my dad ran over a baby squirrel. That was horrible. I was in the front seat and suddenly there’s this squirrel standing right in front of the RV, he runs one way, then the other. Then squish. It was horrific. I screamed. I literally screamed. Obviously, my father didn’t see it. My stomach turned. Literally. And ya’ll know I can handle some pretty gross things. Just the sight of this innocent little being getting squished was just a little much. Ya, I gotta be done with this subject now.
We finally got to the campground around 7. My dad started working on the sewage problem. It killed my sisters and my mom to not be able to pee freely all day. We had to stop. Unless they wanted to pee on the road, which Darby decided to do. Of course, the tanks held some of it, when my dad went to work on it pee spilled all over his head. It was disgusting. It’s fixed now.
We wanted to go to LuLu’s, where there was a guy called the “Sauce Boss.” The dude sings the blues and makes gumbo, and then serves the gumbo after he’s done. Awesome huh? But by the time we got around to it was too late. He had already started and the wait was atrocious. So we went with plan B. The restaurant was called Sea n’ Suds and it was a small beachfront restaurant. I got the seafood platter to share with Tatum, including gumbo (I love that stuff), popcorn shrimp, hush puppies, fried fish, crab cakes, Cole slaw (yuck), and oysters. Yum yum yum. I love seafood.
We walked along the beach afterward; and went into this ginourmous souvenir shop. They had around eight whole rows full of jewelry, each with around three or four stands. I was in heaven. I thought of you V, they had flip flop bird houses, picture frames, necklaces, beer bottle openers!

Smiles!
~Morgan~