Day 2 / Night 2

Yesterday was a looong driving day, we covered 650 miles and stopped at Vidor, Texas which is just inside the eastern Texas border.  We drove through New Orleans yesterday but didn’t stop.  We saw enough from the van.  The place is an absolute mess, abandoned, damaged buildings as far as you can see.  It looked like the hurricane happened two weeks ago, not two years ago.

Driving all day is tolerable in the party van but not exactly “fun”.  By the end of the day I felt like I had a dull haze all over me.  Even though it was almost 9pm in our native EST zone, Ali and I went to the small, minimal fitness room the hotel has and did some cardio and a few other things just to get some rust off.

Speaking of the hotel, this LaQuinta is almost brand new and it is awesome.  Everything is new and clean.  The LQ in Tallahassee was fine, this place is great!  I stayed up late watching Rounders last night (A) and slept through the night except for a brief episode where Nicki was growling and grexxing at imaginary threats again.  The only problem was Nicki didn’t realize we had jumped time zones and got me up at 5:30 CST. I’m a bit tired.

For a few periods yesterday I pushed the party van past the 73 mph vibration point up to near 80 where the ride smoothed out somewhat again.  However the van felt like it was really working hard to maintain that speed so I didn’t maintain it for very long. 

Texas is very wide, nearly 900 miles where we are crossing.  We are in no rush to leave this nice hotel but the longer we wait, the longer the day will become.

I have an online web album of the pictures we are taking started here.