Sunday, August 31, 2008

Well ... That Was Annoying!

We left Tropical Palms Friday morning. Ted's back was still very painful but he is OK sitting so driving was not a problem. I did all I could to get the outside and inside ready so he wouldn't have to be on his feet. We drove to a nice park in Holt, FL about 30 miles east of Pensacola. It has nice big sites and is well maintained. There are no amenities other than a bath house but for overnight that's all we needed. The owner helped me hook up when he learned that Ted was having back problems.

Saturday morning we continued on I-10, then I-12 to Baton Rouge where we pick up I-10 again. Traffic was starting to pick up. By the time we made Lafayette it was really getting heavy so we decided to press on to Beaumont to be out of Louisiana. Gulf Coast saved us a spot and we stopped there. They said there would be no breakfast because they had hurricane preparedness to attend to. That evening the news announced mandatory evacuation of that area starting at 6 a.m.

We got up and left about 8:30. Our plan was to take I-10 about 5 miles, head north to Sour Lake and then 105 west into Cleveland and south on 59 to I-45 and Rayford. What works in theory doesn't work when you have *$#&^*(@ running the show. We got to 105 and 146 and were forced to go north. They didn't care where we lived, we had to go north. We were about an hour from home before we turned north. We spent almost three hours on this road going very few miles. I found another west route to take us to 59 but when we got there we were told we had to go to Livingston to get to Conroe. Since Livingston is about 50 miles north of Conroe I asked him where he studied geography! But that's what we had to do. Go 50 miles north, cut across a county round to 59 and then come 50 miles south. The normal 2 hour trip took 5.5 hours. I know they wanted people to go north away from the storm; however, they forgot that lots of people live in the Houston area and didn't need to go north to find shelter. They had shelter if the %*&% would let you get to it!

We got set up at Rayford and our dear friends Jay and Rick washed the front of the RV to get all the love bugs off. Then they did the same to the truck. They set up for Ted and I know they'll tear us down tomorrow so Ted will only have to back the RV into its spot later in the day when we put it away.

Good friends are so wonderful to have. We thank God for them.

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