June 11th Decatur -> Mobile

June 11, Decatur -> Mobile, 377 Miles.

We had a lazy start to the morning. Decatur is a pretty little place so we wandered around for a bit sampling the WiFi and coffee. The coolest coffee place was a little arthouse place full of interesting types, subtely played mellow jazz and good coffee. It was also called the java monkey, which gets it extra kudos in my book for having monkey in the title.

About tweleve we were suitably caffinated and blogged out so we grabbed the maps and looked for our next port of call. The grander plan has us hitting New Orleans soonish. We decided to get the guts of that trip out the way by aiming for Mobile (Mo-beeel) tonight, it is only about 2-3 hours from New Orleans. Mobile was described as a "crappy version" of New Orleans by our ever-helpful bar staff. Hmm.

So Keith and I alternate driving for about the next 6 hours. This puts us ahead of the game milage-wise and will let us slack of in New Orleans for a couple of days. The weather report still reports a tropical storm on its way, should be an interesting way to see New Orleans :)

We arrive in Mobile and head for the centre to check it out. It is absolutely desolate. No-one is moving and there are hardly any cars. Most of the businesses are also closed. Hmmm. Its also a bit of a dump, which is in complete contrast to the pretty lovely suburbs we drove through on our way in. Eventually the penny drops and we notice sand bags placed in front of some places, we reckon there has been a storm / flood warning and everyone has buggered off inside rather than chancing it.
So we abandon plans to spend much time in the centre and head out to find a WiFi'd motel. Soon enough we come across one, check in, dump our stuff and head out for some grub and booze. The meal was as usual huge, good and cheap. The beer was as usual small, dubiously fizzy and cheap. I'd forgotten my ID but a combination of cursing, pleading, questioning the need for ID and pretending to be Keith, soon got me some booze.

I finish the night playing with the new toy I got today at one of our road side stops, a Nikon coolpix 7800 camera :) I got this one because it compatable with my iRiver and so spend a good 10 minutes transfering stuff to and from the iRiver and camera just because I can :) Heres the test photo I taken in Mobile :-