FLA to Austin, TEX via Houston

Gustave, the Teutonic storm that bore down on the Gulf Coast, was not on our minds when we decided to grace the Dutch household with our presence for several extra days. The morning we left (ok, so it was the afternoon) we were bound for Mobile, Alabama, right smack-dab in the middle the hurricane's projected path. Mobile, not exactly a vacation destination, had our requirements for a stop-over night: 1) a Subway 2)free HBO 3)a middling-to-decently clean bed.
We awoke 14 minutes after 4am, right as all hell broke loose and Souther coastal residents took to the roads northward. Any other time, driving Interstate 10 would have taken maybe 7 hours from industrial Mobile to Uber-industrial Houston- with that route closed to westbound traffic from where we were, we instead wove our way north along backroads, inching east across Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana for 14 hours, through Podunk towns, piney villages and odd, economically depressed hamlets barely worth the cement and rebar it took to make them.
Finally, having crossed into Texas and turned south through Jasper (about as nice as its reputation may have you believe), we arrived in Houston in the evening in time to meet up with part of Andy's Texas clan, the Boones.
Mike (Andy's Granny's son) and his wife Susan, their daughter Allison and her husband Homer, Mike's brother John and his wife Katherine (totting young Sprague), Susan's mom and brother, and John's college friend Ted all welcomed us with a feast fit for a royal court. We ate and laughed, talking with the other young Boone gal Jessica in Chile via internet videoconferencing, enjoying the comfort that family always engenders.
We retired to the Omni (a resplendent business hotel in the Heart of the Energy Corridor of Houston) for a nice night's rest before hauling to Austin, our Texas haven, in the morning.

Susan, Mike, Moose n Em.

Andy n Allison.

Lil' Sprague.