The Scenic Route - G A Johnson - Bog

In the summer of 1999, a forgotten age before smartphones and the wisdom of Wikipedia, two friends trek from the Rocky Mountains to the Louisiana bayous in search of a cure for their postcollege let-down blues. Ready to fail for the sake of change, Jon Colefield signs on to a doomed mission for his company just to be near a girl he's only met once-at the New Orleans airport bar. Jon sets out for the bayou like a knight on quest, hoping the girl will be his Holy Grail. Len had just come off his latest business failure and finds himself living on Jon's couch. He's got nothing better to do than ride along with Jon until he has a stoned epiphany (a "Lenpiphany") while watching Smokey and The Bandit. Instead of loading Jon's furniture into the moving truck, he sells it, and buys 400 cases of Courz [SIC] hoping to make a quick buck down south. Jon won't find out until they've driven halfway to their destination. Len won't find out that Courz IS sold east of Texarkana until they reach Louisiana. The drive becomes an odyssey wrought with near disasters and populated with everything from the KKK to Chupacabras. When the worst is thought to be over, Len loses the trailer hauling Jon's car on the highway in Dallas. Or so he thinks... After Jon throws a left hook to Len's jaw and a tire blows on the moving truck, the two separate outside Shreveport. It will take a truckload of Creoles, the Voodoo King of New Orleans, a fishing contest, and an alligator to bring the friends back together. All that they have endured culminates in a new and final mission: saving the family marina of Jon's new love interest from foreclosure.