Photos of Loving True Blood Shreveport Trip to See Charlaine Harris June 12-14

Charlaine Harris speaking in Shreveport: Author!Author! Pt3

on the road again...we are on the road to Shreveport

We are heading to Shreveport on the first day of our Charlaine odyssey..

Great group...@SookieBonTemps, @HoytFortenberry, @Robiart and @Eric'sTXgal at the wheel.

We didn't get much sleep but we are excited

More soon and remember to follow us on Twitter..

Dallas hosts Sookie Stackhouse fans and we travel to see Charlaine. Harris

The True Blood / Sookie Twitterverse is now beginning to arrive in Dallas ...We are staging here for our trip this weekend to Shreveport to meet Charlaine Harris.

We have all become fast friends over the past 6 months and some of us traveled together to Los Angeles in April to attend True Blood Paleyfest. The group of folks that have contacted me for meetups in Shreveport consists of people traveling from 9 states, both U.S. coasts and from Canada, amazing.

The folks you want to follow this weekend will be:
@SookieBonTemps
@HoytFortenberry
@EricsTxGal
@FeliciaFangs

Also attending
@Robiart
@TrueBloodDallas (I don't usually tweet in the Sookie Twitterverse but I do author)
@BonTempsBugle
@AmericanVampMag

I will be blogging ..but the blog will be a little slow while I'm on the road.
If you don't twitter you should, you can watch my Twitter stream right from this blog (box bottom right)

This is what my friend Hoyt posted to his blog...

Headin' to Shreveport

Now I do my fair share of errand-runnin' for my Momma in Shreveport, but it's not often I get to actually meet up with some friends there. That's why this weekend I'll be hangin' out with @SookieBonTemps and @TrueBloodDallas in Northwest Louisiana!

We're all headin' out to see Charlaine Harris at Shreveport's "Author Author" festival this weekend, and it's lookin' like we're gonna have a blast!

Like Sookie mentioned on her blog, I'll probably do a bunch of tweeting OOC this weekend, as this is a trip that doesn't really fit into our little twitterverse -- but just maybe I'll keep the accent ;)

*Ahem* So I guess for any a y'all who need a ride to Dallas tomorrow night, my truck leaves @MerlottesBar around 7pm (we can't ALL fly y'know)...

Team Dallas True Blood Paleyfest Travelogue: Part three by ObjectDesire

Day 3 Agenda: Warner Brothers VIP Studio Tour, PaleyFest TrueBlood Event,
K24 Diner (TB Fan Meet-up #3)

We sleep in a bit, breakfast again in rooftop garden, and Dallas blogs/twitters.

Warner Brothers VIP Studio Tour: We have reservations for the 11am tour.
We have time to peruse the gift store and have a coffee while waiting for our tour. Our tour guide is a nice young man, Wes Smith. When questioned later in the day, he admits to being an actor and to having an IMdB credit.
The tour is interesting and we see sets for ER (in process of being torn
down) and Cafe Perk set that has been preserved from Friends. We also visit the set of Two and a Half Men which is on hiatus. Everyone from our tour leaves early for a "Fine Dining" experience, and we get tour guide to ourselves for last 20 minutes of tour. We are disappointed to learn that because HBO is currently filming, the tour vehicles are not allowed into the backlot where Merlotte's and "the swamp" are located. These locations are part of the tour when filming is not in progress.

We enjoy an excellent lunch at the Warner Brothers Cafe (BBQ Chicken-OD; Cheeseburger-Noct; Soup/salad-Dallas). Dallas receives a phone call from Sookie who tells folks are already lining up outside the ArcLight Theatre and suggesting we bump out arrival time by 1/2 hour.

We head back to hotel to rest and change for the evening. Dallas blogs/twitters. Because we have increased the amount of time we will be standing in line, last minute shoe choices are made.

ArcLight Theatre/TrueBlood PaleyFest Event: It is a short drive to the theatre from our hotel. We are happy to find that only about 40 folks are in line in front of us when we arrive at 4:30pm. We find @SookieBonTemps in line. The young ladies first in line are Eric fans, run an Eric blog, and arrived at 8am this morning! They are also Dallas blog fans and were at Alex's Bar the night before. Excitement is in the air. We are eventually joined by Robiart, Beadrbob group, Jeweltoo, FangsNRoses, and Dana. News camera crews film up and down the line and stop to interview VampNerd who is near front of line. Sookie spends time in line twittering, trying to find someone local to take the 2 spare tickets we have ended up with. The doors open at 6pm and we score seats on row 5 right side of theatre (excellent seats). Dallas and Beadrbob group have center row 2 seats and FangsNRoses is on front row!

We are treated to a clip from the 70s soap "Dark Shadows" to start the evening. After brief remarks from the moderator, we see a compilation of clips from TB Season 1 and then an exciting clip from Season 2, very exciting and suspenseful. The actors are introduced: Alexander Skarsgaard, Carrie Preston, Nelsan Ellis, Rutina Wesley, Sam Trammel, Ryan Kwanten, Stephen Moyer, and Anna Paquin. They are joined by series creator, Alan Ball. Dallas has several articles about the interviews and Q&A on her blog.Ei Ei from Beadrbob group asks an excellent question. SookieBonTemps tweets throughout the event. Dallas has collected her tweets on her blog.

K24 Diner: After the event is over, we walk a few blocks to this all night diner, found for us by Robiart, for Fan Meet-up #3. We end up with 5 tables of fans, including VampNerd, Sweetwater, Skarlett, FangsNRoses, Jeweltoo, Robiart, SookieBonTemps, Dallas, OD, Nocturnalinnc. We have essentially taken over the front half of the diner. We table hop, have excellent food, share stories from the weekend and the Paleys. We are standing in groups preparing to leave when a handsome man with a pretty girl squeeze through our group to leave. VampNerd suddenly squeals, "Dave Navarro" I follow you on Twitter. She follows him outside and he graciously poses for pics. The most interesting thing is that he was there the entire time we were but everyone was grouped around Dallas (fairy blood? you tell me) and we did not notice him! The wonderful Sweetwater sneakily has picked up the tab and will not accept money from us. Cheers and thanks, Sweetwater!

We say our goodbyes at the diner and make our way back to our hotel--happy, sated, exhausted. We spend the remainder of the evening packing and preparing for a very early departure the next morning. Dallas blogs/twitters.

We have had fun adventures, met interesting TrueBlood fans, and have seen the TrueBlood actors up close and personal. Listen to Dallas' BlogTalkRadio show on Monday, April 20th. All the fans we met at PaleyFest will be calling in to discuss their experiences!

The two part show/ podcasts can be heard here:

http://lovingtruebloodindallas.blogspot.com/2009/04/true-blood-dallas-blogtalk-radio-live.html

Team Dallas True Blood Paleyfest Travelogue: Part two by ObjectDesire

Day 2 Agenda: Easter Sunday Brunch at hotel, Getty Villa/Malibu, Drive PCH1, Fish Tacos, Gran's House?, Parker Lighthouse Restaurant & Alex's Bar (TB Fan Meet-up #2), and Surprise Karaoke

Leisurely brunch eaten in the beautiful rooftop garden of our hotel:
brioche, Mediterranean frittata, fresh fruit, french press coffee...yum!
Return to room to make preparations for the day. Dallas blogs/twitters.

Getty Villa/Malibu: Once again, no traffic to speak of. See Pacific Ocean for first time this trip. Arrive 45 minutes ahead of our reservation time, but are admitted anyway. Participate in an interesting tour of the Villa grounds in which we learn to make jello and that our guide doesn't know how to email. Leave tour early and enjoy cappuccino/coffee/chai tea latte to gather strength for self-guided tour of museum and grounds. Many beautiful pieces of Roman and Egyptian art are viewed (jewelry, pottery, sculptures).
The grounds are beautiful and we have wonderful views of Malibu hills surrounding the Villa. Discover upon leaving that we have not paid excellent attention to where we parked. Visit several parking levels before stumbling upon car in another parking area.

Fish Taco Stand: ( it's actually Malibu seafood) Dallas takes us to her favorite fish taco stand, on PCH1 just north of Pepperdine University. The drive along the ocean is beautiful. At the taco stand, we all have the fish tacos which are made with a combination of grilled salmon, tilapia, and halibut, shredded cabbage, and special sauce. Very good! Once again, excellent people watching--we see couples, families, surfers, college students, and tourists; Dallas scores a coveted table for us.

Drive over mountains on Malibu Canyon Road. Once over the mountain, Dallas has some information about location of filming locations.We feel we get awfully close, but have to cut the search short because we are suddenly out of time.

Zip back to hotel using freeways (with NO traffic!) and change clothes for dinner and Alex's Bar. Deciding what to wear for a nice restaurant then a rocker bar is a bit tricky. Dallas and OD both end up with white shirt, jacket, and jeans. Nocturn wears cool T, black jeans and jacket. We are excited to finally meet @SookieBonTemps outside of Twitterville. She joins us at our hotel for the drive to Long Beach. She is beautiful, vivacious, intelligent, and funny--just what one who reads her tweets would expect!

Parker Lighthouse/Long Beach: We are worried about time because we get a late start, but once again NO traffic to slow us down. We take only one wrong turn, but Dallas enjoys fast u-turns, so this is a treat for her. We arrive at the restaurant only 20 minutes late. Here we are joined by IYOUWANT2, Robiart, FangsNRoses and her daughter, Dana, and Jeweltoo. The food is excellent (seafood, steaks, salads, gumbo) and a few of us indulge by sharing a warm apple tart...mmmmmm. We spend about 2-1/2 hours visiting and eating before some of us head out to meet more Dallas Blog fans at Alex's Bar.

Alex's Bar: We have an adventure finding Alex's Bar in a 3-car caravan.
Ms. Robiart has been to the bar before but confesses in advance that she is not skilled at finding even familiar locations. After a slightly wild u-turn, we lose Robiart (in car 1) but are talking to her by phone.
IYOUWANT2 (in car 2) has a GPS system and we follow her. We drive into an AutoZone parking lot and to the left we see an alley with a very familiar structure--the building we see in background as patrons enter Fangtasia in TrueBlood. Yay! Once again, Dallas finds that elusive parking spot (poor IYOUWANT2 does not have magic and parks on street). We are met in parking lot by a handsome young man who says, "Are you Dallas?" He turns out to be Patrick, Robiart BF. We discover that Robiart has had a flat tire. Patrick is on his way to rescue her and has been waiting to make sure we arrived safely. We stand briefly outside gazing in awe at the front of the building. The awning and the window are both there (no "Fangtasia" of course, but very exciting to stand in that spot!). We are greeted by a very large bouncer who could probably give Quinn a run for his money. Inside, we find the IMdB ladies, Beadrbob, Ei Ei, and Mermaid, along with several other TrueBlood/Dallas Blog fans. OD confesses that after 2 glasses of wine at dinner and a Heinekin at the bar, plus very loud music...she did not get all the names of these wonderful ladies. Perhaps Dallas can fill in a few blanks here? The live band is in full swing, music is loud but good, even if OD cannot understand a word that is sung, age of crowd is young (20s).
We all make sure to visit the infamous ladies room to take pics of kewpie vampire doll murals. Dallas and Sookie decide to take a pic together in the photo booth and find some interesting items inside the booth.
Most of the ladies have been at the bar for awhile and they depart shortly after we arrive. They will all be at PaleyFest tomorrow. Ms. Robiart makes it to bar but has had to abandon her car because the correct tools to change tire are not available. Her knight in shining armor, Patrick, heads out to find tools. We hang out at bar for awhile. As we are leaving, we find Alex, bar owner, sitting outside. He clears the outside area so we can take pics then comes over to chat. He has correctly surmised that we are True Blood fans.
Dallas' glamours him and he reveals some interesting info regarding filming at the bar for Season 2. The info is innocent, but gives us a big clue about how closely Season 2 will follow Book 2 .

Karaoke: On the way back from Long Beach, Sookie receives a call--some family and friends are at a karaoke bar on LaCienaga. Dallas and Noct are excited to join them; they are kind enough to drop a very tired OD at the hotel first though. Reports have it that Dallas and Noct do not participate in karaoke, but Miss Sookie gets a standing ovation! Sookies family and friends are fun and entertaining. It is very late when Dallas and Noct arrive back at hotel. ( very very late !)

Team Dallas True Blood Paleyfest Travelogue: Part one by ObjectDesire

Los Angeles Paleyfest Travelogue: Part one by ObjectDesire

A story in which we meet many friends from around the country and discover that Dallas has fairy blood.

Travelers in our party include LovingTrueBloodinDallas (Dallas), ObjectDesire (OD), and Nocturnalinnc (Noct)

Day 1 Agenda: Pink's, Griffith Observatory, Galanga Thai Restaurant, and NoHo Theatre for Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (TB Dallas Fan Meet-up #1)

We all arrive at separate times but arrange to meet at airport

Dallas surprises us by wheeling in to scoop us up in a bright, shiny blue convertible.

Pink's: We put the top down and head straight to Pink's hot dogs on LaBrea Blvd for a world famous hotdog. We are fortunate to find a parking spot just one block away. We discover we have only 4 quarters between us, but to our shock this gives us only 1 hour. Dallas searches her purse and finds a handful of dimes which gives us...1 hour 56 minutes. Off we march to stand on line for our hotdogs. The line snakes around the building but we enjoy the camaraderie of our fellow patrons and people watching. One man shows up to stand near the line with a large gray parrot. After about an hour we reach the front of the line. Dallas orders a spicy Chicago Dog, Noct orders a chili cheese dog, and OD orders a bacon chili cheese dog. We all have an Orange Crush with our meal. It is a beautiful day and we score a table on the patio. Beside us, in the parking lot, a man plays his trumpet as entertainment. Noct and OD begin to fret about the time and our belongings left in the car. Dallas says wait and leaves us guarding her food. She returns with the car and pulls into a space that magically appears in the parking lot (those of you who have visited Pink's know how miraculous this really is). First the empty patio table, then a parking spot! Noct and OD begin to get suspicious that Dallas knows magic spells.

Griffith Observatory: The drive up the mountain is spectacular. Beautiful views of Los Angeles are afforded at every curve. Unfortunately, the Observatory itself is closed for a special event (we never learn which event specifically).

By now, we are getting a bit short on time, and head to check into our hotel. Hotel Le Petit, (more here )turns out to be small, lovely European style boutique hotel. OD still wonders what candles were burning in the lobby--they smelled wonderfully exotic. Our suite has a sunken living room with a fireplace and a small "eat-in" kitchen, in addition to the bedroom area. We have 2 flat screen televisions (which we never turn on!). The towels are soft, thick bath sheets (I can just see Dallas rolling her eyes now--she doesn't care about the towels). But Dallas's hotel picking magic holds and this one is a winner.

We freshen up, change clothes, and are joined by the lovely Robiart, a local girl, who was so instrumental in helping Dallas find restaurants and meet-up spots for this trip.

Galanga Thai Restaurant: We learned of this delightful restaurant after TrueBlood actor, Patrick Gallagher ("Chow"), chooses this spot for an interview ( See his interview here). OD's daughter, Molly, and niece, Sara, meet us at the restaurant for dinner. Delicious food is consumed: Thai lettuce wraps, curry dishes, garlic shrimp (ordered by OD, of course). This restaurant should be added to everyone's "Must Visit" list.

NoHo Theatre: Traffic is surprisingly light (Dallas? Magic?). Our trip takes only 28 minutes and we have time to walk next door to Starbucks for coffee. At the theatre, we are joined by another local fan of Dallas' blog, the sweet and lovely IYOUWANT2. The play, Bram Stoker's Dracula, is excellent with creative staging (and we get to see Dracula's naked behind--a bit gratuitous, but gorgeous nonetheless :-)

Back at our hotel, we end the evening with Ms. Robiart, laughing and dissecting TrueBlood and Sookie Stackhouse books (Eric? Bill? Vampwich? What will happen in Book 9?). Make plans to meet Ms. Robiart on Saturday evening, then fall into bed and sleep soundly.( OD goes right to sleep Dallas and Noct stay up much later :))

New Orleans and Sookie Stackhouse: Hadley's apartment

Sookie's main connection in the books to New Orleans happens because the death of her cousin Hadley. Hadley as it turns out had become a vampire and was romantically involved with Queen Sophie Anne at he time of her final death.

Sookie travels to New Orleans in the book, Definitely Dead to close out Hadley's apartment after she learns of her death and goes to settle the estate.

In yet another one of the many charming mistakes in the Sookie books, we get 2 different stories about Sookie's previous visits to New Orleans.

In Club Dead , Book Three: Sookie visits with family as a young girl.

The newer tourists were the ones who wanted to rub elbows with the undead; patronize a vampire bar, visit a vampire prostitute, watch a vampire sex show. This was what I'd heard; I hadn't been to New Orleans since I was little. My mother and father had taken my brother, Jason, and me. That would have been before I was seven, because that's when they died.Mama and Daddy died nearly twenty years before vampires had appeared on network television to announce the fact that they were actually present among us, an announcement that had followed on the Japanese development of synthetic blood that actually maintained a vampire's life without the necessity of drinking from humans.

In Definitely Dead, Book Six: Sookie visits in high school and says it's her first and only visit to New Orleans.

It was raining, and it was four in the morning. I wondered if there was an IHOP anywhere nearby. I'd been to one, once. It had been wonderful. That had been on my only previous trip to New Orleans, when I'd been in high school. We'd been to the aquarium and the slave museum and the church on Jackson Square, the St. Louis Cathedral. It had been wonderful to see something new, to think about all the people who had passed through the same area, what they must have looked like in the clothes of their time.

While we were recently in New Orleans, we took some walks in the French Quarter to try to find some of the locations Sookie might have visited in the books. We took some of the location descriptions from the book and just for fun tried to find something in real life that is similar.

The first thing was to find a home that was close to what Charlaine describes as Amelia and Hadley's duplex in NOLA.

From Definitely Dead

We were on a quiet residential street when the limousine pulled to a curb and stopped.
"Your cousin's apartment," Mr. Cataliades said as Diantha opened the door.

I was facing a six-foot wall with an opening for the driveway. It was hard to tell, in the uncertain glow of a streetlight, what lay within, but it seemed to be a small courtyard with a very tight circular drive. In the middle of the drive was an explosion of greenery, though I couldn't discern the individual plants. In the right front corner was a tool shed. There was a two-story building forming an L. To take advantage of the depth of the lot, the building was oriented with the L inverted. Right next door was a similar building, at least as far as I could tell. Hadley's was painted white, with dark green shutters....

There was a broad roofed gallery running below the windows and doors of the second floor, which would provide shade for people sitting inside on the ground floor.

We also believe that the apartment is located in the French Quarter as Sookie says she can hear jazz music from Bourbon Street and she say's it is located on Chloe Street.

Now the style , design and description is JUST exactly right for the more residential streets of the Quarter, the one thing that was a problem was finding a house with a courtyard big enough for a circular drive, above you'll see a photo of one of my favorite or all the homes we saw and very close to the description.

Now, there is no Chloe street in the French Quarter but there is a Conti street and matter of fact the house in this picture is located newar Conti and Burgundy street.

I'll have a few more New Orleans sites for you later this week.

It's a nice place to visit but it's good to be home and a plea for New Orleans !

Thanks to Object Desire's fabulous driving, we zipped our way home today- we had a great time listening to the audio book of Definitely Dead.

We ate beignets one last time at Cafe Du Monde, packed up the car, spent an hour or so touring the still devastated 9th ward and then visited St. Louis Cemetery.

We then made our way home and we were back in Area 6, Kingdom of Texas by 7:30 pm.

I have been to New Orleans many, many times and I love it each and every time...but I had not been back since Katrina and what I saw made my heart ache.

I would like to ask everyone that loves the Sookie books and Louisiana to consider making a donation to one of the great organizations that are working to rebuild the massive devastated areas of NOLA. There is NO city in America like New Orleans and we must continue to care and help them to rebuild ...

I would recommend Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild the great city and/or Make it right, which is building fabulous new green( solar) homes in the 9th. (this is the organization Brad Pitt is involved in ) My family is fighting over the t-shirt I brought home, so maybe you guys support them by buying a t-shirt or other merchandise. buy one here

We saw Habitat Spring Break student volunteers there this morning raking and cleaning ..and they are also involved int he Musician 's Village.
( I took photo above left this morning of one of the fabulous new homes being built !)

If we all just send $10 bucks it would help..

on the road..to Dallas

we are saying good bye to the french quarter..I'll
twitter more later...

yes, Cafe Du Monde was excellent ..:)

French Quarter and being tired and happy

We are just back to the room after a 2 hour walking vampire tour ...we learned so much.

We are working on Sookie sites tomorrow in the morning after Cafe Du Monde ...

I cannot even tell you how fabulous the tour was and I actually made some great connections for our True Blood meetup to be held here in November.

So much more , soon.

No Blogtalk Radio show tonight - we are on the vampire tour in the French Quarter in New Orleans!

The show resumes next Monday night ...and I'll let you know what we found on the tour!!

I am tweeting and posting as we go along on the trip....so also check the tweet feed below on right or here

http://twitter.com/trueblooddallast

More after the tour...gotta run

Dallas and OD

Louisianna trip day two : River Road plantations..

We stayed here at the St Francisville Inn and we highly recommend it ..yummy cheesy grits.

We are leaving our hotel headed to Rosedown Plantation and the Myrtles later for coffee.

You know the Myrtles if you watch Ghost Hunters. I'll let you know if anything spooky happens. ( see below)

Still still drizzling but it's beautiful...I'll take photos and post tonight.

http://www.stfrancisvilleinn.com/

We will then take the "River Road " down to Norlin's

St. Francisville ferry

The only way to get here is by ferry and phew ...we made the very last ferry

Dallas is heading towards New Orleans ...

We are staying in St Francisville, Louisiana tonight...on our way to New Orleans.

It's beautiful here and we'll be heading out in the morning for haunted and historic plantation homes to tour and to get a little look at Baton Rouge where True Blood is schedule to film some time in the next few months.

So we know we will be back...

We will be in New Orleans tomorrow evening ...

http://www.stfrancisville.net/

Travelogue to Louisiana Part Deaux : Dallas and friends tweet their way through Northern Louisiana

Saturday, March 7, 2009

7:30am ObjectDesire (OD) picks up Nocturnalinnc and Arianwyn (henceforth NC and Aria) at their hotel then drives to Dallas' house. This is a bit early as we had a late night drinking margaritas and listening to Latin Jazz the previous evening (whoosh, Dallas can boogy, especially after a couple of drinks; NC and Aria not too bad either!).

8:30am Depart the metroplex with Dallas behind the wheel. Have many road snacks, but Dallas is peeved that OD forgot Cheezits.

9:00am Stop at Starbucks. Need coffee...

10:30am Stop to buy Cheezits.

11:00am Cross into Area 5, Lousiana (we have previously obtained permission from Sheriff Eric Northman). Visiting wiki girls are required to "raise the roof" and "woot, woot" as we cross the border. They comply.

11:30am Pass FotS church. Double-take then note location for later reconnoiter.

11:50am Yippeeee! Bill's house is still fabulous and beautiful. No construction foreman is present today so we can loiter a bit longer taking pics of house and each other in front of house. Dallas leaves gravel on driveway, but NC swipes a rock.

12:15pm Enter Mansfield--visit courthouse and magic tree (Bubba's establishment is still there). Park near Mansfield Police Station trying to decide if it stood in for BonTemps station in TrueBlood. It is a close call, so we then debate whether it is against the law to take pictures of a police station. Sneek a few shots with much anxiety. Dallas pulls out in path of only other car on road in Mansfield and we narrowly miss a collision. Now we are really rattled and fear arrest at any moment. ( Oh-- it wasn't that bad, but it was the only other car in Mansfield and it was right in front of the police station-"D")

12:45pm Having avoided arrest, we decide sustenance is in order. In honor of Sookie, we eat footlong chili cheese dogs at Sonic (Sookie likes Sonic doesn't she?). Dallas whips out iphone and begins Twitter roleplay with @SookieBonTemps.( Dallas also DID NOT have a footlong chili cheese dog!)

Afternoon: *Times now blurry to protect secret location of Jason's house and Rattray's trailer*
YES, WE FOUND JASON'S HOUSE! No glamouring was involved, unless you count Dallas glamouring her computer. We are able to identify the various outbuildings and the picnic spot from Stackhouse family flashbacks.
A short way down the road, we find the spot where the Rattray's trailer was upended by our Bill.

2ish: Much pleased with ourselves, we head back toward Shreveport.
Sneak stealthily up on FotS Church. Jump out and "snap, snap, snap" take photos. Drive around back...even creepier back there. Hold breath until we finally make it out of parking lot and back on the road.

2:45pm Take NC and Aria past the Shreveport filming locations--site of Monroe vamp house, Lucky's Liquors and Ogilvie-Werner House seen in opening credits, and the Strand theatre.

3:30pm Drive to Lake Bistineau to see if we can find where Terry and Andy fished and Sam ran nekkid through the trees. Lake is beautiful and we find some likely spots. Take more photos.
We take a good look around on drive to and from Lake Bistineau because this is the route Sookie, et. al. would take to Shreveport from Bon Temps.

5:00pm Arrive at Ralph & Kacoos for dinner (this is where Sookie and Quinn dine on their date). See stuffed tiger in lobby--hope it is no one we know. Order way too much food, attempt to eat as much of it as possible.

6:30 Back on the road home. Twitter role-play is heating up. Aria has had instructions in iPhone and Twitter and reads tweets to the rest of us. Much hilarity ensues, with Dallas having to pull over to tweet responses. Aria given new instructions on iphone keypad after we pull over in one too many dark spots and (I swear this is true) a coyote stares us down. We are laughing so hard, OD (who has a cold, stops breathing--okay, okay just gasping for breath).
We laugh hysterically all the way back to Dallas. Plans are made for a June trip to Los Angeles. Sookie is invited via Twitter.
Stay tuned :-)

haha -this is great thanks so much OD!

Yes, we can't disclose the location of the Jason house or the Rattray trailer ( known as Four Corners ) as they are located at private homes and the owners have not disclosed the location in any other interviews. Bill's house has been written up many times so that's not disclosing any secrets. I love this area more and more every time we go back.

I can't disclose who this is in the photo at least one person is one of the 3 other people on the trip and I took the photo.

**We did do the radio show last Monday night with @SookieBonTemps and all the girls called in and talked about the trip and the twitter hilarity if you missed the show you can listen here

** OD writes these great travelogues for all our trips others are here ( Houston to meet Charlaine and our first trip to Bon Temps http://lovingtruebloodindallas.blogspot.com/search/label/travelogue

True Blood behind the scenes: More on the Monroe vamp house

You guys all remember the burning of the Monroe Vamp house in True Blood last season . That was supposedly the recently purchased home of Malcom, Liam and Dianne. It was set on fire by 'the Rednecks' at the end of Episode 7 , Burning House of Love and and we see Sookie visit the site and view the results in episode 8 , The Fourth Man in the Fire

We just got back from Shreveport, so I've now visited the site twice, well, it's where the house once stood before it was destroyed in a "control burned " for the show. It is now just an empty lot but in digging around a little I found that the buildings that were once there are still visible on Google earth. Here are the Google Earth shots from early last year and my photo of how the site looks now.


I have other posts on this filming site here :

http://lovingtruebloodindallas.blogspot.com/2009/01/true-blood-behind-scenes-monroe-vamps.html

http://lovingtruebloodindallas.blogspot.com/2009/01/true-blood-behind-scenes-4th-man-is-in.html

Louisiana and our visit to Bon Temps was just wonderful !!!

We thoroughly enjoyed our day trip to North Western Louisiana. We visited many of the True Blood filming locations, some we had visited before and 3 new ones!

We went to the actual geographic location of Charlaine Harris's Bon Temps as well as the Alan Ball'S True Blood location...

If you follow me on Twitter, I am actually still there ( as "Dallas" role playing with the True Blood twitter gang) and staying at Sookie's house. When we got there late last night, we seemed to have disturbed Eric and Sookie's game of Scrabble. If you follow them on Twitter you know exactly what Scrabble is an euphemism for. :) When we felt like we were possibly disturbing them , we left and went to theBon Temp Sonic for milkshakes.

When we came back later, we were greeted by both Sookie and Eric. Eric was very gracious and even kissed us all on the cheek when we arrived. The ladies who accompanied me on the trip all swooned and vowed they would not wash that side of their faces in the morning.

We all spent the night @ SookieBonTemps house and the other girls headed back to Dallas this morning, I am staying to do some more interviews for the blog. We have more twitter goodies brewing, so stayed tuned to @trueblooddallas and @SookieBonTemps for more excitement.

Thanks (as always) to the wonderful ObjectDesire and our out-of-town guests this weekend
(who flew all the way in specially from North Carolina and Ohio) our friends from the HBO True Blood Fan Wiki, Arianwyn and Nocturnalnnc.

The weather was gorgeous, the company was so much fun and a great time was had by all...

More photos coming, as well as another one of Object Desire's hilarious road trip travelogues ...

If you don't twitter you need to ...I tweeted all along yesterday. You can set up a free twitter account here : http://twitter.com/

and find me here: http://twitter.com/trueblooddallas

(*note Sookie's house as it appears in True Blood is in California not in Bon Temps, LA but you can pretend ;D)