We opted to take to the roads today and headed towards Round Rock where my in-laws live. The day started off well enough, as we took care of most things last night... like storing in the garage anything and everything that could be used by the wind as ammunition if left outside. We both had full tanks of gas, so we were also ready in that arena.
We hit the road about 7:30 am, and left with the expectation that our normal 2.5 to 3 hour drive could be at least double that. My goal was to take as many backroads as possible, and stay away from any of the familiar highways, since those would most likely be the preferred routes for everyone else. I like to read maps and familiarize myself with optional routes, and I also go out with my father-in-law when he's researching real estate for investements, so that worked in my favor as to knowing which roads went where.
Things really worked well for use on our way to College Station. We took mostly FM (Farm to Market) roads that ran parallel to the main highways. I was able to keep a fairly good average speed, and usually was hitting 60 with no problem.
The first half of our trip was fairly painless. It took us a little over 2 hours to get to Bryan, and the roads we took were better than I expected. I was surprised at how light traffic was.
The only hiccup of the day was when we were about 10 miles south of Hearne on Texas 6. Traffic came to a crawl, and we wouldn't reach Hearne for another hour and a half... that's about 7.5 miles per hour... ouch.
Once we got to our turnoff for Round Rock, it was normal driving again. We were on highway 79, which cuts through several small towns, so we had the usual slowdowns there. I even saw a guy trying to cross 79 on horseback when we were in Rockdale. We used about a half tank of gas getting to our destination, so we filled up on the way in to town, and arrived about 6 hours after we started.
My brother-in-law mentioned to me that he works with a bunch of people who have family coming in from Houston and that a lot of them left yesterday, and didn't arrive until today, so our trip seems to be quite extraordinary compared to most others.
As we headed out of our subdivision, and crossed over I-45, I was taken back by how many cars were still on the highway. It resemebled a scene from Independence Day or Deep Impact. Come to find out later, many people were running out of gas on the side of the road and were left wondering what to do. I heard on the radio that this was also happening on I-10, and fuel tankers were helping out those in need by giving out 5 gallons of gas to anyone with an empty tank. Quite the honorable deed.
Now to keep an eye on Rita's path and see what side of the storm hits our house.
Hurricanes Rita
