The BIG theme of the weekend

Trip 2: 2814 miles to date, 47.5 hours drivingI'm in San Antonio.

Let's see. I typed out a blurry, stammering recollection of my New Orleans trip this morning, but remembered I had to get out of there because I had a big day planned. Then I remembered that I didn't write about the first, oh, 13 hours of Saturday. So I have to catch up...

Saturday morning: Left Atlanta (the BIG peach) and, after a brief stop, headed to Anniston, Alabama with my good friend and all-around hosehead Steve. Why? Because there's a BIG chair there. The world's biggest chair, at 33 feet high, rests in sleepy Anniston, AL.


"There's nothing like a good sit." -Montgomery Burns

Steve headed back to Atlanta and I moved on. I stopped and ate lunch in Montgomery, AL, home of a BIG civil rights movement. Pressing on... to the south. I'm already in the deep south, so I went... more south!

Landed in Pensacola, FL. A BIG hurricane hit there not too long ago. They're still in very bad shape. About 2-5% of the roadside trees were uprooted or broken. The roads were clean, and the debris was gone, but the buildings were destroyed. Anyway, at the end of the road I saw... the Gulf of Mexico. What else would I see? Actually, I saw the rusting hull of a BIG ship... the now decommissioned aircraft carrier USS Oriskany. Even in its current state- that of a ghost- it is a daunting and impressive vessel.


Thank you for your service to our nation.


I never realized the Gulf of Mexico had so much water.
Turned west, and got lost in the Alabama bayou. Found the road and blasted through Mobile and southern Mississippi, and ended the trip in the BIG easy.

Spent the night observing a BIG party.

Sunday morning I tried to find the end of a BIG river. Specifically, the mouth of the Mississippi River. Alas, I had no boat, and the bayou protects that secret.


Whoops... guess I should turn around!

So I turned around and visited Fort Jackson, built in 1862 and still intact. It was held by the Confederates until the Union Navy and Marines overran it in what would become typical American military fashion- bomb the hell out of it until it becomes discouraged and then invade with overwhelming force. A sister fort exists on the opposite bank, it was built in 1789. But it's not restored, it's falling apart, there's no road to it, and the owner doesn't want to do anything with it. Plus, and this was key- I had less than 1/4 mile visibility from dense fogging on the bayou. So I wouldn't see it anyway.


The River Styx... no, that's in Europe. This is just the Mississippi.

Stopped on a stretch of bayou to take pictures of birds with BIG bills- the pelicans!Onward, stopped in Baton Rouge for food and fuel, and to the BIG state of Texas. I stopped in Beaumont and got a picture of a BIG fire hydrant- the world's 2nd biggest fire hydrant (just displaced by a Canadian fire fighter's memorial in Manitoba) (damn hippies).


Think of the size of the dog that could take a leak on this...

This is not the end of the BIG things I'm going to see, but at least you get a fever for the flavor of my vacation.