The Valley Report - the drive

I got out of the office right after 1 o'clock. The plan was get home, pack the car, pack the baby, get on the road. We got to the house and fell promptly asleep. The baby had just fallen asleep for his nap, carol lay next to him and i was on my mother's la-z-boy. We woke up around 3:45 or so and quickly got out of the house. We were finally on the road at 4:30.

The traffic leaving sugarland was pretty stacked. Things cleared up right at Richmond.

Right outside of Wharton the traffic suddenly began to clump up again. Once we came over the freeway hill we saw a pretty nasty accident. An SUV was overturned in the median (and banged up pretty horrendously too) and a mini-van with it's front end totally crushed in. There were fire trucks and an ambulance already there (there is a hospital nearby) and we saw a couple of stretchers being loaded into them. Luckily there were no blanket covered bodies scattered about. Carol can't handle seeing stuff like that.

The baby was hungry. About 4 miles from the accident site we exited fm 102 @ Wharton and went to the Whataburger, which also happens to be right next to the hospital. We put shoes on the baby and went ahead and had dinner there. It was about a 1/2 hour stop. Which is just about how long we have to keep the baby out of the car so he forgets that he was just in it - this keeps him from having a fit when we try and put him back in the car seat.

This tends to make road trips a lot longer. We did this twice.

We drove straight through Victoria. We stopped in Refugio for our second stop at a gas station with a Subway in it. Carol changed adofo iv's diaper (twice). We let adolfo iv roam around the gas station (it was one of those extra big stations) for about 1/2 hour.

I stood outside for a bit after i had re-organized the backseat for carol. I couldn't belive how many people were on the road. This was one of those super gas stations with like 15 pumps; they were ALL full and had cars waiting. There were families stuffed into bug smattered cars. There was a handfull of cars towing other cars (something that is so common here - i couldn't help but think of Carl Deal's explanation: they're smuggling drugs and money in the bumpers of these cars)

We sailed through woodsboro, odem, corpus christi, robstown.....the boy falls asleep at robstown......

I stop for gas at Bishop: a little over $11. The boy stays asleep. We get to Kingsville and start on the 60 miles trek through King's Ranch void. I hardly feel it. We exit Bus. 77 just outside of Raymondville and take the backroads through Delta Lake to get to Elsa. Here, on this set of roads, is where my car is practically slathered with bug bodies. Particularly cool was a lightning bug that lost his shiny butt-juice on my windshield. It was pretty cool. I was sad it only happened once.

The fog was particulary bad.

We got to Edinburg at about 11:30, for a total trip time of exactly 7 hours.