Evacuation adventures!

***Edit*** Before you read all this, go over and welcome my mother to the world of blogging.... She just made her first post! So.... They want to evacuate the forth largest city in the US? Did anybody think this thru before this???? We left Wednesday at 6:30pm... Hopped on the road from my house and cruised over to 146... no problem... there are hardly any cars out here at all.... oops... there's quite a few on 146... At 6:48pm I reset my trip meter to zero while sitting on top of the Kemah bridge. Then we sat. Every so often, we'd get to move forward... but mostly, we just sat. and sat. and sat. At 8:30 the next morning we pulled over to a gas station in Mont Bellevue- about 20 miles away from where we started... Then I got the privilege of standing in line for 45 minutes waiting for a bathroom. The first night of it all was ok... we weren't moving, but it was cool enough that people were still friendly... we were listening to people call in to the local talk radio station and the local Christian station... everybody was in the same boat on all the different highways... we just knew that just up ahead it had to clear out and traffic would be flowing..... Around noon on Thursday, we got diverted onto 321 in Dayton. This is a road thru the middle of nowhere with nowhere to stop and nothing to look forward to.... this is where we sat thru the heat of the day on Thursday... 101 degrees and worried that we'll run out of gas... can't run the AC... Did I mention that in the car was me, my wife, my daughter and our two dogs... both the 8 1/2 pounder and the 86 pounder.... Anyway... we sat on this little road thru most of the day... people were trying to pass on the shoulder and then cut in line farther up... The guy in front of me decided to drive on the shoulder and block some of these people... then they started passing in the grass... He got pissed and pulled out a gun... between the heat and the traffic, tempers were flaring.... About the time I told my wife it looked like things were going to get ugly, a little country road appeared... We decided to turn down it and try our chances on finding gas. It turned out to be the best decision of the entire trip. After about 7 gas stations that told us no chance, we finally found one with a long line in Cold Spring... we hopped in line and waited, and we finally got to fill up with gas... all they had was plus or super left, but I was willing to grab anything at that point. After we filled up, I pulled into another gas station and bought a couple of maps... There was no way I was going to try to get on the freeways again... I plotted out a back road rout to Crockett, and figured we'd jump over to Nachadoches from there.... It felt really weird for awhile driving on roads where you could actually touch the gas pedal... We got to run the AC! Things started looking up! Aside from a little bit of traffic just outside Crockett, the roads were mostly clear... We finally made it to my dad's at around 9:30pm on Thursday, just 27 short hours after we started. 150 miles in 27 hours. Not too bad considering some of the stories I was hearing... it took my niece 36 hours to get to Fort Worth.... So anyway... we got cleaned up and slept hard at my dad's... the next morning we hit the road around 11am and it was clear sailing all the way to Kentucky. Got in around 3:30am. Slept hard again... Being out there was great... got to spend a lot of time with Stormii's family... Got to see new babies and see how older one's are growing... Got to spend some time thanking God for getting us thru the most nightmarish evacuation I have ever seen... It was a good trip and well worth all the time spent in the car. Coming home wasn't nearly as bad.... We left at 8pm on Monday... I drove through most of the night until we pulled over in one of the last rest stops in Arkansas to take a little nap... After a couple of hours sleeping, we went on to my dad's house... he still doesn't have power.. Lot's of trees down and power lines down... We went out to lunch with them and headed on our way again... finally got home around 7pm on Tuesday to find just some slight tree damage.... Thank God for that! I came back to work yesterday and today.... I have a tree service guy going by the house to give me an estimate on removing the tree that fell... I'm still tired from all the driving, but all in all... it was a good trip. The only problem from it all is my sudden urge to cry when I see brake lights in front of me (even at a stop sign)... other than that, it's all good. We missed Survivor, The Amazing Race, and a few others, but I could really care less at this point. My family was my only concern and I am grateful that the storm missed us... Thank you everyone who was concerned and for your thoughts and prayers...