Rules of the Road

While on the my four day trek to North Dakota and back, my dear friend, Melanie, read us a fun article entitled, “Rules of the Road.”  It was one woman’s insight on the essential ingredients for a good road trip, and while we didn’t agree with the writer totally, we thought it was a fun concept.

On the seven-day, 15-state trip, Alee and Stephanie and I compiled our own guidelines for a road trip win.  (We had a bit of time on our hands, it turns out.)  Here’s a recipe for success, according to us:

RULES OF THE ROAD

BY ALEE, JULIA AND STEPHANIE

1. Choose Your Road Trip Companions Wisely! 
1. They should have interesting stories to tell.  All three of us have lived abroad, one of us recently dated a repo man, and when all else fails, each of us can at least tell not-so-interesting stories in a variety of accents ranging from Minnesota Native to Southern Belle to French Mademoiselle.  Interesting stories (and accents)…check.
2. Sharing food for the entirety of the trip is non-negotiable.  If you are uncomfortable with people reaching onto your plate to try what you’ve ordered, you should probably just get out of the car now.
3. Though not required, it’s helpful if all passengers are within three-quarters of an inch of being 5’8” so there’s no need to adjust the driver’s seat.  Also, should everyone in the car wear a shoe size 10, that’s just bonus! 
4. A love of Broadway musicals and a strong working knowledge of lyrics to Wicked is HIGHLY recommended. 

2. Maintain A Sense of Humor Always

With the right people, even stopping at gas stations can be hilarious.  Stephanie would regale us—in perfect accent—with crazy things she overhead from the locals inside various establishments.  Alee kept us on our toes with an ongoing “gas pumps across America” photo shoot.  I provided the soundtrack of encouraging giggles from the backseat.

And if you can't decide what to order...Rock, Paper, Scissors is a good way to go

3. You Gotta Have Teamwork. 

This will enable you to, hypothetically, show up in Nashville at 9:30 pm on a Thursday and still have a fantastic meal.  Sounds simple, but it was quite a feat to…

1. Find the name of a restaurant that was still open, as it appears restaurants in Tennessee close en masse around 9 pm
2. Locate the afore-mentioned restaurant that was very cleverly hidden in a web of one-way streets on the bottom floor of a hotel in an obscure part of town (we like a challenge)
3. Secure a bottle of wine to drink at the afore-mentioned restaurant (this involves a mad sprint through a Target in flip flops, sassing one of their employees, regrouping in the parking lot, temporarily giving up hope, and then ultimately finding our treasure in a charming wine bar just a block away from our “BYOB” restaurant)
4. Finally catch our breath and settle into our DELISH Indian cuisine…with a few friendly observers.

Perhaps all this could have been avoided—but what would be the fun in that?—if our next RULE were not…

4. No Eating In Chain Restaurants. 

Duh.  The only exception is if it’s a regional chain you cannot find in your home state AND you have exhausted all other options.  This happened twice; the first time was on a Sunday evening in Iowa.  There is NOTHING open, I swear!  The second chain we patronized was during that 3 – 4 pm window on a Monday afternoon in Montgomery after being turned away from three other restaurants.  It ended up ok:

*Exception #2: Coffee can be purchased from chains…especially if free wifi is involved.

5. Yell At All Border Crossings

…or whisper-yell if a fellow passenger is sleeping, as was the case of TN, VA, NC, and SC…

6. Admire the Scenery.

Whether it’s the devastatingly handsome waiter at Layla’s Market, beautiful rivers through Memphis and Louisville, or a brilliant orange sunset in West Virginia, take the time to enjoy whatever view the road brings you. 

Charleston, West Virginia

7. Play to Your Strengths. 

If you are pressed for time, you may want to deputize the self-proclaimed “Aggressive Defensive Driver” to get you to your destination safely and swiftly.  (I’m not naming names.)

8. There Are NO Secrets In the Car. 

The upside of this is that I learned some Spanish while texting to someone’s boyfriend on behalf of that someone who was driving.  Now, my Spanish includes “what I learned on a high school mission trip to Mexico” vocabulary and “Spanish for Lovers.”  Olé!

9. Pay Attention to Road Signs. 

(This might have helped Stephanie and I a few summers back, when we made a two-hour detour driving from Santa Cruz to Fort Worth.  Oops!)  At any rate, we do not stop at establishments that advertise “CLEAN BATHROOMS!” as this is a guarantee they are anything but.

10. Sometimes, Sacrifices Must Be Made. 

You simply can’t do everything you’d like on a road trip, or you’ll never make it back home.  In Kentucky, we had to make the tough choice between visiting the National Corvette Museum or tasting bourbon at Maker’s Mark Distillery.  I think it’s clear what we chose…

That brings me back to Rule #1…

Eating Our Way Through 'Merica!

One of the major highlights from our seven-day road trip was the food.  I decided last summer that “counting” a country or a state—meaning you can legitimately say you’ve been there—requires that you eat a meal (not in an airport or train station) in that place. 

You can see now why it was important that we eat well.  We had a LOT of ground to cover.

Enter YELP.  This website is a foodie travelista’s dream come true.  You can search for restaurants across the US with all kinds of filters or preferences.  We operated on a fool-proof method of operation: search “restaurant” with your proposed city of dining, select one and two dollar sign establishments (we may be hungry, but we’re not rich) then sort by highest rated.  From there, you must use your best judgment based on the information provided by “the public.”

Early on, we discovered that restaurants featuring cuisine from around the world were often among the highest rated in a city.  Layla’s Market in Little Rock offered so many fantastic, mouth-watering selections that we almost abandoned our trip and permanently camped out in this Mediterranean diner in a strip mall on the northwest part of town.  (Layla’s Market, coincidentally, won “Best Other Ethnic Cuisine” in Little Rock, which still perplexes me…what constitutes “other ethnic”??)

However, we continued our journey and made it to Nashville just in time to be the last customers at Woodlands Indian Vegetarian Cuisine.  A combination of road-weariness and the overwhelming number of options on the menu led us to put ourselves in the capable hands of our waiter.  Our gamble paid off when he brought us a bit of heaven, smothered in curry and wrapped in garlic naan.  I’m not sure if it was our beauty (yeah, yeah, that had to be it) or our exuberant eating or our tardy arrival when the staff wanted to go home, but we ate for an audience of the ENTIRE kitchen crew.

Yes, ten men in their kitchen whites lined up against the back wall, with arms folded, clearly making comments about us and pointing, watched us eat.  For an hour.

We tipped well.

After our first two restaurants delivered such good results, we decided to yelp our way across the Midwest and South until we arrived back home in good ol’ Texas.

And so the next seven days unfolded in a haze of culinary bliss and the emergence of elastic waistbands.  (No seriously, my jeans did not fit when I got home…but I consider it a small sacrifice.)

We had discovered early on that restaurants featuring cuisine from around the world were usually among the highest rated in a particular area.  What began as an amusing experiment—“of course we want falafel in Arkansas!”—turned into a challenge: eat food from a different country in each meal.

We ate Ethiopian in Louisville...

About to eat Ethiopian fare with our hands at Queen of Sheba Restaurant!

...Thai in Cincinnati, Italian in Charleston (WV), and Japanese in Charlotte.  There was Middle Eastern cuisine in Greenville SC, Cajun cookin’ in Montgomery...

Shrimp and Grits?  Yes, please!

...and Vietnamese Pho in Pensacola.  We sampled Polish chocolate in Seymour, Indiana.  At every turn, we met wonderful people and tasted phenomenal food.

We were commenting on the irony of our “I Heart America” Reunion Tour featuring so many non-American cuisines, when somebody (either Steph or Alee) said this is what makes our country great.

And it’s true.  That’s the beauty of America.  Though we are far from perfect, this is an amazing, wonderful country.  It’s fantastic to walk down a street in the United States where Chinese, Afghan, French, Mexican, and Egyptian immigrants all own businesses that support their families in their new home while preserving the culinary traditions of their native home.  We can experience the great beauty of each culture through the food they cherish.  We can delight in the richness of flavor, the array of textures, and the satisfaction of a healthy, well-prepared meal.

Through tasting food from countries around the world, we fell in love with our country just a little bit more.  That’s the power of a great meal, friends. 

The "I Heart America" Reunion Tour, Part Two

So, this one time…we drove through 15 states in seven days.  Yes, “we.”  And not the royal kind.  But who would be crazy enough to join me on such a crazy venture? 

Meet Alee and Stephanie.

As a side note, I don’t recommend signing up for a 3188 mile drive unless you REALLY know the people you’ll be in small vehicle with for the duration of the trip.

Luckily, these women had already proven themselves in the “awesome” factor, in addition to being excellent travel companions.  I had the privilege of spending time with both of them in Europe last year, and those are memories I’ll cherish my whole life.

Alee and I spent an amazing, serendipitous four days in Paris, where we saw incredible art and architecture, sampled heavenly cuisine française, and met Rick Steves, among other things.

Yep, that’s us.  And la Tour Eiffel!  No bigs.

I shall forever be grateful that I was fortunate enough to see Paris for the first time with Alee.  I don’t know anyone who savors every experience as richly as Alee does, and it was magical to see my friend’s beloved City of Light with her.

Alee also had the distinction of spending Spring Break 2011 with me, where she earned to official title of “Most Understanding Travel Companion EVER.”  Let’s just say there was a wee bit of a mix-up when I made the reservation for our hotel in Fredericksburg.  Turns out, there’s one in Virginia, too.  It was Alee’s ability to rally—in addition to being awfully convincing on the phone with Rodrigo of hotels.com—and seize the moment for whatever it had to offer that made our re-routing to Austin (during SXSW, no less) such a fun turn of events.

Very few photos exist from those three days, but this pretty much sums up the experience, though “wine” could also substitute for “pie”…

Stephanie and I met up in Europe twice last year, in fact.  The first time was to celebrate her birthday and ring in the New Year of 2011 in Heidelberg…

Memories from that trip include a hilarious shampoo purchase, a hike to a castle, and risking our lives to walk through the chaotic revelry of Germans celebrating New Year’s Eve.  If Germans like their booze, then they LOVE their fireworks.  ‘Nuff said.

 The second time Steph and I teamed up was in the summer to revel in all Italy had to offer…and boy, did we! 

At the Colosseum in Roma

We soaked up sun in Cinque Terre, met THE David, sampled gelato as often as possible, poked the Tower of Pisa, flirted with Italian men, splashed the water at the Trevi Fountain, witnessed a near-brawl take place at a football matched, and generally savored every bite of Italian food we were lucky enough to meet.

Stephanie and I came away with memories of an amazing 14 days, and a shocking number of great photos despite the fact that we carried “half a camera” between the two of us.  (It’s a long story.)

With these two women as companions, I knew our seven day adventure would be a success, no matter what lay ahead…