Bloggers Daniella Maney, ‘20 and Mark McPhillips, ‘20 embarked on a road trip this summer with their friend Samuel Piller, ‘20 before coming back to Conn. We will publish a series of posts about what they experienced along the way.... (Read Post 1)

Our second day in New Orleans managed to be even crazier than the first. When we arrived back in the French Quarter, we immediately realized that there was a big event happening on account of the many people parading around the streets in red dresses. Coincidentally, our visit happened to be on the same day as the Red Dress Run. The Red Dress Run, according to New Orleans Online, is organized by a group that is a "self-proclaimed drinking club with a running problem." It was definitely a hilarious sight to see hundreds of tipsy men and women running around in red dresses through the streets of New Orleans for charity. This event was awesome to see and really brought the New Orleans energy that I had missed our first day exploring the city. We danced through the streets to songs blasting from the huge portable speakers of runners. Our soundtrack of the day consisted of songs like "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard and "It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls. We wove our way through the crowd back to Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo for Mark to buy a box of Tarot Cards, which he decided was worth it (he says he's going to use them at Connecticut College all of the time) and I bought a sticker for my fridge at school.

The day before we were too stuffed to eat the last famous NOLA food that was on our foodie list, beignets. The fluffy, warm sugar-topped pastry sounded too good to resist so we walked to Cafe Beignet and ordered three beignets for $5, which was a really good deal. We walked around eating our beignets, then realized that our parking meter was up so we ran to the car and reluctantly left New Orleans. While sadly driving away from Louisiana we made plans to come back with our other friends from Conn knowing we could show them all the cool places we have seen and all of the great food. Our next destination was Mississippi, one of our shortest drives at 3 1/2 hours. It felt like a drive to the supermarket compared to our drive from Oklahoma to New Orleans.

We arrived in Mississippi early and lazed around for a little bit before getting hungry again. Mark found a place online called the Iron Horse Grill with tons of different kinds of foods so we knew we had to eat there. The atmosphere inside the Grill was fancy and laid-back at the same time. There was a big stage where a live blues musician was performing. We were seated by a very chatty waiter who immediately knew we weren't from Mississippi, especially because of Mark's choice of a grilled chicken over fried chicken. Samuel and I both got the Navajo Chicken which was very good. It was two full pieces of chicken smothered in cheese, onions, and mushrooms with loaded potato and grilled zucchini side. While chatting, our waiter told us about the music history of Mississippi. None of us knew that Mississippi was as big of a music hub as it is. He talked to us about a musician named Robert Johnson and his contributions to the Mississippi music scene. Then he instructed us to check out the museum of Mississippi musicians on the second floor of the restaurant. After we ate, we went up to the museum. It was filled with wax figures and we realized that a lot of musicians we like are from Mississippi. Some musicians I didn't know were from Mississippi, like The Allman Brothers, Jimmy Buffett, Britney Spears, and the lead singer of Paramore. After reading some plaques, we left the restaurant to go back to our hotel home and laid our food babies to rest.