This morning was a new start. I had an appointment at Midas to bring the Jeep in for a checkup for 8:30am. I left three hours later knowing that I need four new tires. I knew the tires were worn, but they are even more so now after almost 8,000 miles.

Anyway, also this morning, we’re leaving the beds and heading back out into the world of camping. We’ve been sleeping in beds for a full week now, so before we get too accustomed to them, we’ve got to leave. Chris led the way and after almost falling asleep, I took over. We tried to find a campground in Homestead, FL, that Kelly had picked out. However, it led us down some muddy dirt roads lined with fields and covered with chickens. Clearly, no campsite here. We didn’t want to spend the night in the Keys due to the high pricing of camping, but since it was after 5:00pm and we had nowhere to stay, we went all the way to Key Largo, Florida in the Florida Keys where we got a site for the night.

And oh what a site it was. Just as we got the tent up, a hard rain hit. We had to move the tent due to a newly formed stream that formed through our site. For the remainder of the evening and night, it rained on and off, the hardest hitting right in the middle of the night. Lightning and thumder directly over our heads. Rarely do I hear thunder that loud. It wasn’t even a rumble. More of a cracking sound. And to top it all off, there were these tiny little flies. They were similar to fruit flies, only smaller. Which meant only one thing. They got through our tent screen with ease. We have good reason to believe that these little buggers bit us all over as we slept as well, which pretty much kept us all up, all night. Horrible night for sleeping. On a side note, we had a pet crab that was living in a hole near our tent. We couldn’t get it to come out though. It was pretty shy.

A beautiful morning here in New Orleans. The sun is shining, it’s nice and hot, and our vehicle is infested with hundreds of tiny ants!!!

We awoke this morning to find out that the ants were small enough to get into the Jeep. They were marching by the hundreds along all of the door frames, in and around the cooler, and down and around the floor matts. Great, just great.

As Kelly constantly freaked out making faces at the sight of all the ants, we brushed them away with the snow brush we had inside the Jeep, did a quick check for more (not removing much of our items), then headed off as we had plans to make a swamp tour for noon.

New Orleans East was quite the sight. Most of it was abandoned as Katrina had turned most of the housing and department stores into boarded up buildings with no rooves. Large Toy’s R Us stores were boarded up and all of the trees were snapped like twigs. As we got nearer to the swamp tour location, there were sailbots and small houses along side the road. The nearest water we could see was very far away, so who knows how far these abandoned vessiles were carried. It was like a graveyard.

I almost forgot, while killing some time in the morning before our tour, we decided to check out a cemetary. Seems creepy, I know. But cemetaries here in Louisiana are much different than most other places. Why? Well, New Orleans is over 42 feet (or was it meters) below sea level, so all cemetary graves are above ground in sarcofocises(sp?). It was neat to see. Entire families have been layed to rest together in small marble buildings set in rows. I took a couple of photos, but I felt weird taking photos in a cemetary. Anyway, kinda neat to see.

At 11:30am we arrived at Cajun Pride Swamp Tours. Not to get into too much detail about it, I’ll let you know that we had Captain Ted as our guide and we got to see some wild alligators in the Pearl River. We also saw some hurricane torn cabins while Cpt. Ted tossed out tonnes of information about the area that he had collected over his years. Cpt. Ted even got the gators right over to the boat with marshmallows which was really cool. It was very cool. The whole tour was 2 hours. Another we recommend if you’re in the New Orleans East area.

After the swamp tour, it was back on the highway where we zipped through Mississippi in a couple of hours, then went through Alabama in less time. Funny enough, the song Sweet Home Alabama played just minutes before we went through. Before we knew it, we were in Florida. Nothing like hitting four states in one day.

We couldn’t find a state park that we had planned to stay at for the evening, so we drove on to the next one. Now, remember those ants we had? Well, we kept finding some roaming around every now and then and after Chris opened the cooler to find hundreds inside, we pulled over to examine the situation.

Ants had overcome our cooler. We yanked it out of the Jeep, only to find the most ants I have ever seen in my entire life, making a new home out of ours. To give you an idea of how many ants were under our cooler, I will simply say that it looked like we had a black carpet layed out. There were… THOUSANDS of them. “Holy S***!!!!” we all gasped simultaneously as Chris moved the cooler out. It was insane. I coated them all with Off bug spray and scooped out as many as I could. It was getting late, so we said screw it, put the cooler back, and jetted to the next camp, Naverra Campground. While Chris hung out at the site, Kelly and myself took the Jeep (of which we completely gutted) and vacuumed out the entire thing. Ants and all.

One thing I forgot to mention as well. The iPod had shuffled more than 900 songs before Chris went and messed it up again.

Oh what a day today was. Today was the day where we got all of the bad things out of the way… we hope. Either that, or today was a day for the “things to go wrong” to catch up to us.

Here is a quick list of what made today such a special day:

1. First, while I was attempting to shave this morning, the battery in my razor cut out. So I got to spend the morning walking around with only half of my face shaven while I charged it.
2. The next great thing to happen this morning was probably one of the worst. We found out that the spout of our cooler had opened and all of the water from our cooler had leaked out into the Jeep overnight. Oh man, what a mess. Sure it’s only water, but sitting water. So we cleared out the entire Jeep and sopped up any water we could find with towels, then left the doors open for some air drying time. We sprayed some air freshener and an hour later after breakfast, we were on our way.
3. While we were drying up the water from the Jeep, we noticed that the large peanut butter jar we had in the cooler had a nice big crack in the lid. Meaning, it had filled with water. So Chris and Kelly got to have some soggy peanut butter for breakfast. After dumping the water, it was fine. After breakfast, we were off to the San Diego Zoo. One of the United States’ most popular zoos.
4. The next item on this list isn’t so much something that went wrong, but more of something that we weren’t fond of. After the zoo, we headed out of San Diego (yes, I never got a chance to surf). To be honest, we didn’t find San Diego very clean. Maybe it was just the areas we saw. Regardless, its not one of our favourites. So yeah, at 4:00pm, the temperature hit 42 degrees (107 F) and the scenery along the highway was 100% rock. No life, no water. Just heat and rock. In fact, it was so hot, if rolled down your window and held your arm outside, it was hotter than inside the Jeep with the A/C off. So believe it or not, we drove in the heat with the windows up. We even had zip-lock bags with ice on our heads.
5. Next, while Chris was driving, a tire from an old pick-up truck ahead of us decided to drop off the back and head straight for us while we were driving at over 70 mph. Chris swerved and just missed the tire. I never even thought to look into my mirror to see how others had reacted. Regardless, it woke us all up and we were very alert for the remainder of the drive.
6. There is only one good thing about Arizona… the sunsets. Everything else… sucks!
7. After setting up camp, in the desert, I found out that my shampoo bottle had opened and leaked all over the inside of my bathroom bag. Great. Now I have nice, creaming, slimy, goo all over everything.
8. And finally, after setting up the tent in the dark, something decided to sting me on the toe. We weren’t sure what it was at the time. I guess it was an ant and hoped it wasn’t a scorpion. We later confirmed it was a bee, as there were a few buzzing around the ground near the showers. Excellent.