On the morning of our second full day in New Orleans, one of our first stops was St. Louis Cathedral. The majority of the structure dates back to 1850, with minute portions integrated from still older predecessors. It’s the centerpiece of Jackson Square (as you’ll notice in the preceding chapter), free for tourists to visit (donations are suggested), serves an active congregation, and remains the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans.
Jackson Square in the French Quarter in early evening. Where tourists, beggars, and horses vie for control of New Orleans.
Bordering one side of the French Quarter is our old friend the Mississippi River, which we last saw in Minneapolis on our 2014 road trip. We’ve effectively now seen both ends of it. After dinner at the Royal House, we ended our day of too much walking with even more walking, checking out the art, the businesses, and the life teeming and scheming along its banks.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we took our first plane ride and arrived unharmed. While my wife spent the week working in Colorado, I spending the week as a bonus vacation in Colorado Springs, trying to find new things to do that we didn’t already do on our 2012 road trip. Short, on-location MCC entries have consequently been this week’s theme.
Tonight we flew home from Denver, and boy, are my everythings tired.
MCC readers may recall my wife Anne and I visited the National WWII Museum as part of our 2015 road trip to New Orleans back in July. When I researched possible stops for this week’s trip to Colorado Springs, I was surprised to find they have a logical companion attraction, the National Museum of WWII Aviation. The latter isn’t owned by the same people, hasn’t been given the same official accreditation, and definitely doesn’t have the same ginormous funding, but it serves as a local hands-on educational center for students and aficionados specifically interested in World War II air combat history. Like the National WWII Museum’s Boeing Center, this one boasts its own collection of vintage WWII planes in various states of flight readiness. Unlike its rival, this one isn’t afraid to get into the nitty-gritty of engine design, aviation mechanics, comparison/contrast studies with Axis aircraft, carburetor logistics, and related vocabulary such as “pitch” and “ailerons” and “sorties”. But the important thing is you still get to look at real planes.
Pictured above is their F7F Tigercat, one of the largest intact planes on site. This particular model wasn’t deemed ready for war use until August 1945, by which time the Allies had everything pretty much under control. The Tigercat came in handy years later as a night-flying option during the Korean War. Its development occurred during WWII, but it just missed out on any real action against Nazis or Zeros. It wasn’t the Tigercat’s fault that it couldn’t be there.
Anne, major WWII history buff that she is, might’ve appreciated the museum more than I did, if only she could’ve had that chance in person.
This week my wife and I have been taking advantage of our hotel’s complimentary breakfasts to save as much money as possible (their modest, cook-to-order omelet bar is a nice touch), but sometimes a guy needs a change of pace. For lunch today I drove an hour north to check out the Denver Biscuit Company, part of a restaurant triumvirate that was featured in a 2013 episode of Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives. That’s not a show we usually consult for travel reference (thanks to a 2012 disappointment in Topeka), but this particular joint had other incentives to lure me away from Colorado Springs.
Pictured above is the Dahlia — sausage, egg over-easy, apple butter, and maple syrup on “biscuit French toast”. It’s one of several creative biscuit sandwiches they serve for breakfast and lunch. For that “Triple-D” episode the esteemed Mr. Fieri sampled their “Elmer”, topped with pulled pork, barbecue sauce, coleslaw, onions, and homemade pickles. For him I imagine it was the only logical option. But I’m a big fan of imaginative breakfasts and knew I had to try it once I confirmed it was real.
The other incentive for my mini-road trip was an invitation from an old friend.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we took our first plane ride and walked away from the landing without a scratch. While my wife is holding up the “business” end of her “business trip” travel deal, I’m spending the week running around Colorado Springs and the surrounding areas to see new sights that didn’t make the cut on our 2012 road trip.
After she was released from duty today a few hours early, we spent some bonus quality time together and visited a few places we’d never been before. One of those was Bass Pro Shops, which has zero locations within 100 miles of our hometown. We don’t hunt, fish, boat, seriously hike, go camping, stock up on assault gear, or participate in most other functions supported by the products we saw, so it’s not as though we’d personally have a good use for one. But we know they’re a big deal to some folks, and we just so happened to be in a convenient position to peek inside one. We decided to browse for our own curiosity.
As I expected, we saw animal taxidermy, assorted weapons, outdoor clothing for outdoor people, fish capturing mechanisms, and so forth. In other words, much like our Dick’s Sporting Goods back home, or the Cabela’s we’ve seen in other states. That makes sense to me. Not our demographic, but we have plenty of friends and family who’d consider such places a great reason for an all-day shopping trip.
And then there was the big guy in the above photo. I stared and I stared, and I don’t get him. I just don’t understand his existence. At all.
Life must be easy for Colorado residents. Whenever you need money, just walk outside, take a photo, turn it into postcards, sit back and wait for tourists either onsite or faraway by internet to make your payday. I don’t see how they can get used to walking out the front door without saying “WOW” every ten minutes and getting on each other’s nerves. Then again, I live in a state where mountains are more or less against the law. To me, mountains are a such staggering part of Creation, and yet in other states live people who think of mountains the same way I think of maple trees. Your everyday context determines what’s mundane and what’s extraordinary, I guess.
This was our view at 8 a.m. this morning from the windows of Indianapolis International Airport. See the colorful Southwest jet at the far end? My wife and I later boarded that one and flew for our very first time.
Right this way for the first of this week’s (probably) short entries!
This “Scrap House” sculpture is a Hurricane Katrina memorial perched across the street from the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. One of several surprise finds along our long, dehydrating path.
Over the last several entries in this series we’ve shared large batches of photos and memories from our visits to the National WWII Museum and to Mardi Gras World, but those two locations weren’t the only points of interest we saw on Day Three of our trip. For this episode we backtrack to recapture some of those random bits that made their own impacts on our overall New Orleans experience.
Redfish beignets at the Royal House in New Orleans.
Day Three of our seven-day road trip was our first full day in the city of New Orleans. We already covered our musical breakfast at Cafe Beignet. As noted previously, “Going into this year’s vacation, we hoped the cuisine would be a highlight at our various stops — be it good ol’ Southern kitchen cookin’, Gulf-sourced fresh seafood, or, really, anything outside of international franchisees.” In that vein, lunch and dinner each had their own approach.
Right this way for another foodie episode, but without using the word “foodie”!
Spongebob Squarepants! Spongebob Squarepants! Spongebob Squarepants! Spongey-boooooob Squarepaaaaaaants!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my wife and I visited Mardi Gras World, a giant-sized warehouse-shaped museum in New Orleans in which floats are constructed, painted, stored, disassembled, reassembled, repainted, reconfigured, and displayed for guests who want to take a long walk through local party-time history.
As promised last time, here’s a sampling of the many heads, bodies, persons, places, and things on display that have entertained generations and enthralled the sober and the drunken alike.
Right this way for famous big heads from Marvel, Star Wars, history, and more!
When it’s Mardi Gras, even the gator and the lobster set aside their differences and party all night together in the same gumbo pot. Meanwhile in the shadows, Burger King bides his time and plots his next sinister move.
When people ’round our parts think “New Orleans”, once they get past the memories of Hurricane Katrina, the next thing that pops into their head is Mardi Gras. Other cities and countries may honor the grand finale of every annual “Carnival” multi-part holiday, but the way it’s talked about, you’d think “Mardi Gras” was French for “New Orleans party”. For all I know, maybe it is.
Anne and I don’t drink, party, observe Carnival, or socialize while our clothes are missing, but we thought it wouldn’t hurt to look into the prettier, safer element of those shindigs: the famous parades and their scintillating floats. So that’s what lured us to Blaine Kern’s Mardi Gras World.
The B25 Mitchell is the kind of bomber used in the 1942 Doolittle Raid, as seen near the conclusion of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor and probably some other, better films.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our road trip to New Orleans continued as my wife and I spent much of Day 3 touring the National WWII Museum. Of all the buildings in the complex, the tallest was the most fascinating and contained the largest objects of all: half a dozen military airplanes suspended in midair.
(See that yellow-and-orange dot in the faraway window that kinda looks like a Ms. Pac-Man fruit? That’s my lovely wife.)
Right this way for the conclusion of a four-part photo-gallery miniseries!
A Sherman Tank! I first saw one of these in the forgotten James Garner film Tank, which played at the drive-in when I was a kid. This encounter was much better than that film.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our road trip to New Orleans continued as my wife and I spent much of Day 3 touring the National WWII Museum — four super-sized buildings and one smaller, locked gallery used for restoration work. With all that square footage and so many high ceilings, the Museum has plenty of space to display the largest wartime souvenirs: the vehicles that men drove into combat.
Hi, we’re guns! You may remember us from such films as Every Men’s Adventure Film Ever, The Complete Chuck Norris Catalog, and Bowling for Columbine!
Considering recent headlines, maybe I picked the wrong week to share photos of guns. Or the perfect week, if you’re on the other side. Blame World War II for the wide selection here.
The front page of a special Honolulu Star-Bulletin Extra published December 7, 1941, three hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
When I first suggested driving to New Orleans for this year’s road trip, my wife was hesitant because most online tourism resources summed up the general ambiance as HERE THERE BE MANIACS. No matter where you stay, how brightly the sun shines, how large your group is, or how tall and muscular you are, message boards and review sites and travel books and Fodor’s agree sooner or later a tag team of America’s Most Wanted will come gunning for you.
Then we found out New Orleans is the home of the National WWII Museum. Not a WWII museum — the National WWII Museum, as duly designated by Congress in 2003. Anne knows stuff about WWII. Longtime MCC readers might recall the story of how we first met:
[Anne had] been a WWII buff for years, and read extensively about Germany in general and Hitler in particular. I still remember the time when the teacher (one Frau Schmitz by name) basically turned the class over to Anne and let her give us a speech about Hitler. Anne proceeded to do so…with no notes, and no real preparation beforehand. As I recall, her extemporaneous speech filled two solid class periods over two days — roughly 100 minutes total — with what she knew about Hitler before Frau Schmitz finally stepped in and resumed teaching.
She’s always up for learning more about WWII, above and beyond what she’s already accumulated over the course of decades. When she learned the National WWII Museum was in New Orleans…well. Murderers, schmurderers.
We are…the Three Amigos!
Day Three, we awoke in New Orleans before 7 a.m., excited and peppy and ready to go. Sadly, most of the French Quarter was still asleep, but we found a place to hang out while we waited for them to catch up with us. No matter where you go, Mondays are Mondays.
One of the G-rated stretches of notorious Bourbon Street on a Sunday evening. Even Party Central needs its downtime.
There she was at long last — New Orleans!
We reached our primary objective at the end of Day Two, thankfully before sundown. All the post-Katrina tourism resources we consulted in our vacation research (books, travel sites, AAA brochures, message boards with supporting posts from wary New Orleans residents) seemed unanimous on one important message: anyone caught outside in New Orleans at night will be swiftly, repeatedly murdered. Perhaps that’s not the reality, but we weren’t prepared to call Fodor’s bluff during our first hours in town. No matter how long we spent in Alabama or at stops along the way, we wanted to be in New Orleans and checked in at our hotel while the sun was still on our side.
We met our objective, and all it took was a long, nearly featureless drive through an unrelated state, braving the cramped hallways that pass for roads in the French Quarter, and cutting a major stop from our itinerary.
The southbound road from downtown Birmingham led us up a ridge called Red Mountain, so named for its red iron deposits and the suitably colored surfaces. Atop one particular crest there’s a park centered around what’s billed as the world’s largest cast-iron statue, molded in the likeness of Mount Olympus’ most underrated resident, the Roman god Vulcan.
Right this way for a closer look at the Hephaestus of Earth-2!
Going into this year’s vacation, we hoped the cuisine would be a highlight at our various stops — be it good ol’ Southern kitchen cookin’, Gulf-sourced fresh seafood, or, really, anything outside of international franchisees. We received our first recommendation from the friendly guide at the Alabama Welcome Center, who insisted that during our road trip we had to try genuine shrimp-‘n’-grits somewhere below the Mason-Dixon line at least once. For lunch on Day Two, I trusted her and gave it a shot.
