long day, short post.

we had about 14 hours of driving to do to get to chapel hill, so we had to leave around 6, but not without going to cafe dumonde first. we stopped by the famous cafe and got cafe au laits and beignet (ben-YAY) for the car. pretty awesome. it’s donut-shaped fried dough with MORE powdered sugar. mmmm. so we drove and drove and drove. seriously, through at least five states… louisiana, mississippi, alabama, georgia, south carolina, and north carolina. okay, six. so even crazier! when we left in the morning there were even more of those crazy long/low bridges, but now it was pre-dawn and foggy as hell, so it felt like the opening to some slasher road trip flick.

maybe you won’t get the full creepiness from this, but it was weird. those posts are for the bridge that they’re building right next to the one we were on. weird. but what was NOT weird was the super awesome bbq joint we stopped at for lunch.

fried green tomatoes!

the place was pretty cool, my grilled cheese was de-lish, and the trading post next door apparently had a born-again christian table setup in the corner. nice.

that was pretty much the only exciting thing that happened that day, until we actually got to chapel hill. mariel’s uncle and his family live there, and we happened to come visit right during the whole college basketball deal. it was craziness. we dropped our stuff off at the house and then went to a bar closer to town, where people were going inSANE over this basketball game. it was to decide if the tar heels would go to the next round, or the “final four”, as the kids call it. they did, for the record. but people were screaming at the screens and stomping their feet so hard i thought the entire floor would cave in. we were on the second floor because the first was a partially-joined mexican place. mariel decided to go out with her cousin and her friends, and lucy and i went back to her uncle leigh’s house because we were about to pass out in our enchiladas. but on the drive back to the house, leigh was explaining to us that as soon as the game was over the cops flocked out to patrol and block off streets and monitor the bonfires that would soon be set in the middle of the street.

i wonder what would have happened if they had lost!