New Orleans to Norther Florida. Everyone thinks Texas is big...Florida...oh my. If I hadn't broken it up in three days I do believe I would have been tortured.

Leaving NO, I wandered around the road less traveled. I highly suggest Rt. 90. It is probably one of the prettiest roads with tons of interesting little towns to pass through. Eye Candy. I ran through Mississippi and it through me off, 3 little towns called Long Beach, Santa Monica and it's escaping me right now but another Southern California beach town, all of which were just east of Pass Christian. It was so beautiful. Ancient. Quaint and lovely gulf beaches. Some of the homes where at least 300 years old. I was really shocked. I daydreamed about renting one of the houses for a month in and just hanging out on this quiet low place.

Quickly through Mississippi and Alabama still on 90 til Mobile and jumped on the 10 for a second until I got into Florida and dropped down again at Pensicola to the 98. More gone towns and bayous and miles and miles of bridges. I tried to find a place to stay in Panama City, but as it turns out there was no place that wanted to take a dog over 10 lbs. Speaking of dogs over 10 lbs, this particular stretch of the trip had Buck in pure misery. The fleas from New Orleans waged war on his poor body. He couldn't relax, they just kept chawing at him and he at them. I felt so awful. I couldn't do anything till I got to a room and could give him a bath but trying to find a place was proving to be really difficult. I had stopped at some wall mart somewhere (All those towns look exactly except for the 3 trees they have going down the median) and got flea shampoo brushes and more pig ears. After stopping in about 20 different hotels/motels I decided to pass through Panama City, the only problem was that the next town was about 75 miles away throughout nothing but secret military marshland. And I just wanted to get poor buck into his hated bath and give him some relief.

Mexico City. First place I saw right on the beach quiet and nice. I got buck in the tub, poor baby and was horrified at how many little brown flecks of fat bellied fleas littered the tub. There were some really nice people staying next door who had plenty of great stories and a fantastic beer for me. But the little brioche that I had that morning was wearing thin and it was either going to be a liquid dinner or I had to go find something. I found this incredibly well lit seafood shack and had beautiful crab and shrimpies. and watched the hunting channel and got some great stories from this fella from Arkansas who's boxer was "the best darn bitch for huntin hawgs ever". He told me about crazy hunting trips gone wrong, ending with wild boars and gashes in dogs to mean people feeding their dog gun powder so they just hated everything but the owner while we watched just turned 21 year olds have "who can eat the hottest sauce" contest. A few made frequent trips to the lav after.
Buck finally got some rest. Then next morning we woke up and Buck made friends with some visitors who own a bar "Gert's Place" in BF Illinois. I got directions and may stop in there on my way back west.

Oh and while all this was going on. After some misdiagnosis, it was discovered that my niece, Mackenzie had a tumor the size of an orange on her ovary. WTF. It has since been removed.