Cross America with the Blues

[Melvin Furd]

My son and I are about to embark on quite an adventure. With the help of this forum we have begun plotting our itinerary to travel from NYcity to San Francisco/ our 'theme' is American Music- a 3 week adventure that will take us to Washington DC (wanna know the blues? what better place to start! :) ever hear Leadbelly's Bourgeois Blues? "It's a bourgeois town!" is Washington DC

2 days in DC-visiting the Smithsonian and the Spy Museum and visiting our House of Congress telling em what we feel- we head down the Blue Ridge Parkway through Virginia and North Carolina. We take 3 days camping out if the weather goes our way.

From here we head to Nashville Tenn for a couple of days of music and hanging out

We'll then shoot over to Memphis Tenn for the river and music for 2 days.

Memphis and onto the Mississippi Delta, The Land Where the Blues Began.
and into New Orleans. Here we will spend a day or three.

From New Orleans and the Louisianna Delta onto Austin Texas! where I know we'll hear some great music.

After Austin we'll be doing some hard travelin' for we'll need to make some time to head into the Canyonlands of southern Utah

after a couple of days hiking and exploring and camping in the red rocks we head toward the west coast post haste into the Nevada desert and onto Reno Nevada for cheap hotel digs at Circus Circus and then home to our home near SF Bay

most of our trip we'll be camping out. keeping our costs down with an occasional hotel or motel. We'll be making a video of our journey and our car is a Prius to keep the gas costs way down and sparing the air a bit with lower emissions. We know its not all fun and light, it'll be tough at times but what in life is worth it if you don't get the Blues once in a while.

Here's our 'rough outline' map. Still in planning stages. any comments, suggestions, words of warning, campsite suggestions, hotel motel suggestions much appreciated.