Blog Entry 1

 Introduction;

 

     Hello, thank you for being here and welcome to my travel blog! My name is Cierra Long. I am 24 years old, I grew up in Felton, California in Santa Cruz County. Growing up in Santa Cruz consisted of tall redwood forests, beaches and small swimming holes. That's what I choose to remember at least. Something that Felton did provide for me was the love of my life. I met Luka my senior year of high school. We have known  each other since kindergarten but actually got to know each other much later. A hop, skip and a jump later we decided to move to Eugene, Oregon in 2019. There we started a life together, finding jobs, meeting new people and growing up together. We stayed in Eugene for five years. After finding jobs and moving from place to place years later we found ourselves with everything we could want...on paper. A beautiful two bedroom house with ceiling to floor windows in a great neighborhood, stable jobs and an amazing group of friends, but something was missing. We both knew what we wanted to do but it took help and courage to get there. We wanted to travel the world. Meet new people, explore new places…be uncomfortable. Isn't that what your twenties are about? So we are doing just that. We sold and got rid of 95% of our belongings, only kept what we needed or would fit in Luka's Kia Optima. We turned in the keys to our house and had one last night in Eugene. We set off the next morning, that's when our adventure began.

 

 

Saturday, December 14th 2024

   We left our life in Eugene, Oregon on the 29th of September. It was a straight shot to our destination Felton, California. A 10 hour drive. Once we arrived we stayed in Felton for 3 weeks. Mostly visiting family and old high school friends. My favorite part of the trip was getting to spend time with my niece, Finley. She is my favorite human. The only way I would move back there is to spend more time with her. We left Felton and drove to visit our friend Elliot in Ventura, California for the weekend. We went out on his boat and did some fishing, watched a football game and went out bowling. After we left Elliot's house we were on our way to Mesa, Arizona. There we visited my Great grandmother, Grandma and my cousin, Jocelyn. We stayed there for a couple of days. There is something about the beauty of Arizona. I'm attracted to the red mountains and towering cacti. I could drive through the desert for hours and not tire of the landscape. We packed our things back up and headed for Texas. The drive took us about two days, we made a pitstop in El Paso, Texas and spent the night in a hotel. Woke up early and arrived in Kerrville around 3pm. We promptly went out to dinner with Luka’s Aunt and Uncle, Nancy and Kim. We watched Bill, Luka’s dad play guitar and sing at a local restaurant called The Ridge. They sell mostly comfort style food, my personal favorite part of the restaurant was the desserts. They had cookies, cakes, pastries and any sweet treat you can think of. My heaven. There I had my first country fried steak. Since then, we have been adjusting to living here. We have been going to watch Bill perform at bars and wineries. One night we took an impromptu night trip to Bandera, Texas.  What they call the “cowboy capital” of Texas. We visited multiple cowboy bars. Texans in cowboy hats and boots dancing the two step and sawdust on the dance floor. Luka and I did our best keeping up with dancing veterans.   The live music and dancing culture here is prominent. Texas is special in that way. A week later we headed off to Foley, Alabama for Thanksgiving with Luka’s family. On the way to Foley we stopped in Lake Charles, Louisiana for two nights. Our visit was brief, we took a walk through the swamp, and had a mediocre dinner of gumbo. The following day we visited a brewery and walked around the downtown area. The next day we drove 7 hours to Foley. 20 minutes after arriving at Luka’s aunts house we went to watch the sunset on the beach. I was happily surprised that Alabama beaches are beautiful, white sand with clear water. The next day was thanksgiving. Luka's Aunt Kathy made a beautiful Thanksgiving spread, we ate early around 2pm. Of course I took a mandatory Thanksgiving nap. The next day we had plans to hear some live music at The Frog Pond, it was a huge property with an old house in the middle, eclectic decorations and chandeliers hanging from oak trees and a stage outside where 6 musicians lined up and played music. We brought our own chairs and everyone who showed up brought food and put it in the house, potluck style. With a separate small house dedicated to only desserts, of course it was named “The Sugar Shack”.  It was a unique experience, the music the musicians played was a combination of blues, country and swamp.  The next morning we set off on the road again, next stop was New Orleans! This is what I was most excited about. I had always wanted to visit. We were visiting in early December so it was not too crowded. We checked into the Andrew Jackson Hotel in the French quarter in the early afternoon. We put our things in the hotel room and quickly set off. Our first stop was Pat O'brians where Luka and I tried our first Hurricane, which is apparently the drink of New Orleans. The drink consisted of rum, passion fruit juice, orange juice and grenadine. Our next stop was Cafe Beignets, where I ordered a Moscow mule and we shared an order of shrimp and grits. From there we walked around and checked out all the voodoo stores and back to back alcoholic slurpee shops. After exploring we stopped at Acme Oyster House, where we had an oyster shooter and charbroiled oysters. I would not recommend a shot of vodka with a raw oyster inside. Yuck. We had a few more drinks at random spots, we even stopped by a liquor store and bought a bottle of tequila which we were all sipping on as we walked through the streets. The star of the night is where we had dinner, Coops Place where we got real Louisiana style cooking. There we had a cup of gumbo, Cajun fried chicken, Shrimp Creole, red beans and rice, rabbit and sausage jambalaya. WOW! Everything was amazing. After dinner we walked back to the main strip of the French quarter. We heard some jazz playing and decided to stop in to check it out. There was a beautiful little bar called Fritszels, in it they had yellow string lights hanging from the ceiling and a 4 piece band playing jazz classics. The main singer had a voice that sounded just like Louis Armstrong. We stayed there for a while sipping on a beer listening to the music, the bar was so packed there was nowhere to sit so we stood and enjoyed our drink. We also stopped in Lafittes, a small cozy bar that used to be a blacksmith shop, inside was dimly lit with a fireplace and multicolored Christmas lights hanging over the bar and little tea lights on each table. From there our night was coming to a close, we meandered back to our hotel and checked in for the night. It is safe to say I was not feeling my best the next morning, but we had a 11 hour road trip back to Kerrville ahead of us. We drove for about 6 hours and finally stopped at my all time favorite gas station, Buccee’s. I had not eaten that day so I went a little crazy and got a sausage on a stick, a club melt, a pulled pork sandwich, candied walnuts and a large root beer. The rest of the drive I laid in the back with a blanket and pillow and read half of my new book. We got home after 10 and we all crashed as soon as we arrived. Since then we have been relaxing here going out to eat and watching Bill perform every once in a while but mainly looking at hotels and booking for our time in Thailand. Currently our itinerary is staying two nights in Bangkok, a couple days in Jom Tiem and then visiting the islands of Koh Chang and Koh Kood. After that is to be determined. Now we are getting ready for Christmas, which is going to be a small gift exchange, a big breakfast and watching Elf of course. Till next time...