The Gulf Coast

This post is incredibly belated and probably should have been at least two posts, one of which would have come in a week ago at least. Sorry about that, dear readers, being on the road sometimes doesn't leave much time for blogging and uploading photos... So here is long-ish account of the Florida, Alabama and Louisiana tour that directly followed our Southwest tour.

Dad and I flew from Durango, CO to Jacksonville, FL to begin the second half of our 3 touring weeks. On arrival in Jacksonville we were given a very affordable upgrade from our basic, tiny rental car to a fancy, high class one, which turned out to be a life saver. It had lots of storage space, was very comfortable and drove really well, all of which were great boons considering that we drove over 2,000 miles in it! 

Dad with the Nissan Maxima we rented.

The next day we drove across the top of a Florida to Tallahassee, where we had a fiddle workshop and house concert scheduled. The workshop and concert were both great successes and a lot of fun. We met a number of great new people and really enjoyed the slice of the music community that we got to experience while there. Our amazing hosts, who put us up not far from the house concert and workshop, were incredibly generous with their hospitality and made us feel right at home--all in all a great experience.

Fiddle Workshop in Tallahassee

After Tallahassee we drove back to Jacksonville for the North Florida Highland Games, where dad was judging the fiddle competition and we were performing periodically throughout the day. In the process we crossed the famous Swanee River (or Suwanee, as it was spelled on the sign) for the second out of four total times. The sign has the music to the song written on it but unfortunately I missed the chance to take a picture of it every time we crossed it... The Highland Games was a great time, with a lot of fiddle competitors and big, appreciative audiences for all of our performances. We were put up in a hotel and also performed at the fancy dinner the night before the festival

After the games it was back across Florida to Sopchoppy, a small town down by the Gulf Coast, about 45mins south of Tallahassee. We played a small concert at a lovely music center and coffee/food place called Posh Java, then stayed with a great guy and banjo player named Frank who lives in a cabin in the middle of some woods that used to be used for turpentine gathering. He cleared the road to his cabin himself and had all sorts of stories about direct experiences with all kinds of wildlife, benign to vicious. Luckily we didn't run into any bears while out there, but it was a wonderful experience all the same! 

Frank and his cabin

The road/driveway--pretty tight for our car at some points!

After Sopchoppy, we had a few days off so we drove down to Orlando and went to one of the Universal amusement parks including the brand new and incredibly believable Harry Potter section of the park. We played an afternoon concert at a retirement center down there and then headed back north, ready for the cooler temperatures of North Florida and the Gulf Coast again. After spending another evening in Sopchoppy, during which dad led a fiddle workshop and I taught a Cape Breton stepdance lesson, we moved on driving along the coast to Mobile, Alabama. The drive was a pretty foggy one and even though we were driving right along the beach at some points we could barely see the ocean at all. It cleared up halfway through, but the bridge across the swampland and part of the bay into Mobile itself was covered in fog again. Apparently it's a dangerously foggy bridge and is the site of the largest multi-car pileup in US history. I got a picture of the sun and the car silhouettes on the other side of the bridge as we emerged from the fog:

In Mobile we played a packed concert sponsored by the Scottish Society of Mobile in the space the Mobile Symphony uses to rehearse. It was a great success and the work of the Scottish Society and fiddler Tom Morley really paid off. 

Downtown Mobile

The next day, after taking a few hours to explore Mobile, we set out for New Orleans. The drive wasn't as long as some that we had done but as we approached New Orleans we hit a line of incredibly intense storm clouds. I'm pretty certain they were part of the system that became the huge tornado outbreak the next day, but for us it was just a deluge of rain that made it almost impossible to see. We pushed through it and as we came out the other side we were almost at New Orleans. Skies over the bridge were wild as the dark storm clouds gave way abruptly to clear skies over New Orleans:

We had two days in New Orleans. The first night we had off and explored the French Quarter. I'd never been to New Orleans before so getting to explore Bourbon St, Frenchman St, and the rest on a Friday night was a dream come true. Mardi Gras was over about a week earlier so I guess those in the know would say it was quiet, but we would never have guessed! The night was full of highlights and we even saw some Hollywood celebrities hanging out in the last place we went to, enjoying the jazz and party atmosphere just like everyone else. The next day was another workshop, this time for the Strathspey and Reel society of New Orleans, followed by a performance at the Irish House, a new restaurant specializing in top quality Irish Pub food--if that seems like an oxymoron you'll just have to go and see for yourself! Our hosts in New Orleans were once again incredibly generous and full of hospitality--I can't wait to go back.

A brass band in Frenchman St.

The last leg of our tour took us back to Alabama on our way back to Jacksonville to return the rental car and fly home. We went to Fairhope, a gorgeous town directly on the gulf, across Mobile Bay from Mobile itself. It was a clear, if windy day and we could see all the way across the bay to the Mobile skyline, many miles away. The bay is incredibly shallow with an average depth of 10ft, so the wind really churned the water up. There was one last workshop in the afternoon in Fairhope, followed by an Irish session in the local pub to wind down from the tour. We were incredibly lucky as one of the workshop participants let us stay in his luxurious guest house directly on the bay while we were there:

The next day we drove back to Jacksonville, spent the night with some people from the Highland Games and flew out the next morning for the snowy shores home in Maine. As I write this I am relaxing on the couch with the dog. I have about a week to relax and then you'll see more posts as I head out again, this time for the Pacific Northwest!

Until then, 

--Neil