[llajumpvid]

I'm in Houston as well and am taking off to stay with friends in Austin....I haven't been through one before but every old timer at work said they'd sit out a 3 but a 4 they are gone. So I take that to get the hell out of Houston. I looked for motel rooms lol! The one I found (1 room in San Antonio)was more than booking a trip to Cancun. This is probably the last time I check in for a while. Found some gas on the way home so we are trying to stow things the best we can and will take off tomorrow am.

Peace out and take care fellow Texans

 

[llajumpvid]

worst day ever!

I will never evacuate like this again. It took us 19 hours to go 150 miles, of that it took 9 hours to go 5 miles.

Next time I'll look into plane tickets or stay home.

The good news is the Armada performed beautifully. I folded the two outside 2nd row seats down giving the two 4 year olds their own play area/bed...its not like they needed their car seats the first 9 hours. I had the ac and brakes fixed Monday luckily. The ac worked for most of the time until the outside temp got above 110 degree. then I had to shut it off for 30 minutes and then I could get it to cool for about 15 before it would quit cooling. After we had gone about an hour at 40mph we were stuck in about a 10mph crawl and I could hear the fan going off the compressor and then turning back on about 5 or 6 times and then the last time it didn't come back on until I shut off the fan switch and turned it back on.

Mileage wise I got the same frickin sucky mileage I get typically, even with 9 hours of idle and 10 hours of stop and stop and a little go driving..10.8 mpg.

the trip was surreal as people were stranded everywhere. I fear the next storm will be very deadly as they will not get many people to evacuate after what they went through doing it this.

 

[llajumpvid]

glad to hear you did okay. Hope Nate was able to get out or is in a preotected area. I suspect he'll check in as soon as he can and if it takes a day or two likely he stayed home and has no power.

I'm worried about the drive back being anything like the drive out. I'm thinking of looking for a rear hitch cargo carrier, and buying a generator and some gas cans in case the power is out for a while if we decide to drive back tommorow.

 

[llajumpvid]

I think I will head back tomorrow morning. I'm going to look for a generator for sure. I'm a little concerned with hauling gas back on the cargo tray and the possibility of being rear ended. That would be a nightmare having a car load with kids and gas going expecially with the exhaust back there. If it only takes 9 hours back I should have a little less than 1/2 a tank that I could syphon out.

 

[llajumpvid]

Well the "boat people" (get it armada, boat) made it back in about 3.5 hours today from Austin. Not bad, much better than the 19 hours there. Would of been worse had we sat through the backup on hwy 71 out of Austin. I hit the detour button on the nav and it got us over to hwy 183 in good shape.

The house is fine except for the smell of rotting food in the drive way. I emptied the fridge before we left and threw what I couldn't get in a cooler into the trash Thursday thinking it would be collected the next morning. I was wrong, I guess the trash men evacuated as well.

Nate glad to hear you made it through safe. I've got a few scrathes now too though I have no idea how the hell they got there???

This was definately a learning experience. I thought I was fairly prepared but I know now I need to be better prepared. I'm going to map a couple alternate routes out of town and get a couple of 5 gallon gas cans, a roof rack and trailer hitch cargo carrier. This will allow me to get up to 8 people out of town in one vehicle.

I can't tell you how happy I was with the Armada in the heat, even the mileage was better than I thought I'd get. Wish I could get it to do better in the city as the 10.8mpg sucks at nearly $4/gal. I got 17.8mpg on the way home so I can't complain much there.

And every dollar I've spent on the dvd/tv/xm/computer setup was worth it. The TV especially, as I could see what was happening along most of the trip. If I'd of known there'd be a 3 hour wait to get on the freeway 3 hours on the freeway and another 4 hours to get into Austin after we made it past the first 9 hours and 5 miles I'd of gone back to Houston seeing the storm was headed well east of us.