THURSDAY July 29th

Well, today we really pushed it and got 526 miles down the road. We left Mississippi, crossed Louisiana and made it a couple hundred miles into Texas and still off the road by 2 PM. Of course, today we started really early, 5 AM. Our bodies had gotten use to Eastern Time so we woke up at 4 AM (5 AM eastern). But it was really nice out and we got a lot of miles behind us before it warmed up.
I had hoped to visit with my brother when we passed through Shreveport but I was never able to get in touch with him. I had two phone numbers for him and neither one worked and I didn’t get any response to emails I had sent the past couple of days. We passed through Shreveport around 10 this morning.

At about 12:30 we stopped to change our hotel reservations as we were going to get further than expected due to not stopping at Gary’s. At that time we were about 150 miles into Texas and I had an email from Pam, Gary’s wife giving me a different phone number and letting me know Gary doesn’t work Thursdays and Fridays. She also tried to call shortly after that but I didn’t have my head set on so I couldn’t answer. At our next stop I called and it turns out we were within 3 miles of their house when we went through Shreveport! Oh well, I get to see them pretty regularly as they visit Oregon to see their grand kids and Mom often.

There really wasn’t much to talk about today other than the nightmare of driving through Dallas (and we didn’t even drive through downtown!). There is no way you could navigate that jungle without a GPS! And the people drive like maniacs! Twice, Mike came within inches of being run over. I remember at one point he was right behind me and then I looked back and there was a car there and I wondered where Mike had gone. He told me later that car cut between us and came within inches of his front tire.

Once we got to the hotel, we quickly changed out of our hot clothes and into something cool and headed next door to have a cold adult beverage. Boy did that hit the spot. Later, we went back over to the same place and had dinner. Mike had shrimp wrapped in bacon which he raved about over and over and I had blackened catfish covered with crawfish in a cream sauce which was very good as well.

I am posting a couple of photos, one is of a rest area we stopped at. Oh, and for those of you from the south or have lived there, we had breakfast at a Waffle House this morning. I am not sure why there are so many of them? (read between the lines).

Well, another day in the bag. Good night, sleep well, and God bless.