[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.

 

[scr38]

That drive must have been hell. I'm glad I stayed home. Hope all works out OK for you. It is fairly quite here in Lake Jackson now. No rain and only light winds. The max winds here should be at about 4 AM tonight. Our good luck that the storm moved up the coast.

 

[92TripleBlack]

That drive must have been hell. I'm glad I stayed home. Hope all works out OK for you. It is fairly quite here in Lake Jackson now. No rain and only light winds. The max winds here should be at about 4 AM tonight. Our good luck that the storm moved up the coast.

Good luck.
Personally, I still can't figure out how if the nations largest traffic jam in history is being televised for hours, the Gov. or state police commander can't glance at the screen and say, hmmm, maybe we should open up the lanes on the other side as outbound lanes. They do this all the time in FL. No big deal.

 

[scr38]

----- Everything is OK this morning. I lost power about 3:15 this morning, but had my generator so all was OK. The power came back on about 10 minutes ago. Very little damage here, just tree limbs down. A large limb broke off a big pecan tree between my neighbor and myself. It fell on their new fence, causing some damage. Everything else is OK, no damage to any houses that I can see.

 

[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.

 

[scr38]

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.

There are wide spread power outages, the company says it may be three days before power is restored. I hear that traffic is already stacking up on 290 inbound. There is almost no gas in Houston. But if it was me I would get the extra gas and generator and come back. The traffic is going to get much worse soon.

 

[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.

 

[ggeorgie]

----- Everything is OK this morning. I lost power about 3:15 this morning, but had my generator so all was OK. The power came back on about 10 minutes ago. Very little damage here, just tree limbs down. A large limb broke off a big pecan tree between my neighbor and myself. It fell on their new fence, causing some damage. Everything else is OK, no damage to any houses that I can see.

good to hear you are ok, :urock:

 

[scr38]

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.

My wife got home a short time ago. She came from north of Conroe, down 45 to the Hardy toll road, to 610, then 59 south to 288 then on to Lake Jackson. She had no problems at all. No slowdowns, traffic was moving normally.
No one else on our street. My neighbor called, they are on the way back from Dallas.

 

[baseballfanz]

Sugar Land Hwy6/West Airport area. Barely rained, most of my neighbors were gone, my next door neighbor spent 7 hours to make a normaly 45 min. drive. My cousin spent 21 hours getting from Baytown to my area. I lost power at 3 am and came back on at 1 pm. Like I told everyone that say they wanted to leave, either leave 2 days before everyone else or don't go at all.

 

[turbogreed]

whats up guys ,

well the storm took a turn for the benefit of houston . and so i was kinda upset with that but what can you do , i was ready for the worst . so the truck did awesome pulled like a beast and ran like a champ . even with 103+ heat in Mexico the truck did its job . i am so impressed with the Armada . now im back home and i have some roof damage and some other small damage to the fence and trees but other than that we are ok

 

[ggeorgie]

whats up guys ,

well the storm took a turn for the benefit of houston . and so i was kinda upset with that but what can you do , i was ready for the worst . so the truck did awesome pulled like a beast and ran like a champ . even with 103+ heat in Mexico the truck did its job . i am so impressed with the Armada . now im back home and i have some roof damage and some other small damage to the fence and trees but other than that we are ok

I am glad every body is safe, and you only suffered minor damage, :thumbup:

 

[adjmcloon]

Hey guys,

Well, by some miracle we found a generator and have power to the ice box and fan, and computer. My parents rode it out and had the eye wall go over their house. My dad is pretty hard core, but even he said he won't make that mistake again. Beaumont and Nederland (where I live) won't let us in. We're camping out at my folks house (It's damn HOT) but I think we might head to H-town later in the week if we can find a hotel to get a break.

The main thing is that everyone is ok. Glad to see my other southeast Texas brothers made it through as well. I'll check back periodically as I get a chance.

The Armada performed like a champ on the crazy drive back from Dry Creek, LA. I towed my cargo trailer when we evacuated and the rig has been fine. Dodging lots of trees and power lines on the way back and the Armada definitely has some scratches now, but overall it could have been a lot worse.

Glad to see that Houston didn't get too much from the storm. Y'all stay safe and I'll check back in a couple of days.

 

[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.

 

[turbogreed]

I am glad every body is safe, and you only suffered minor damage, :thumbup:

so am I , and thanks for your concern