Brenda and Harlan's Trip Blog

Another restful day. Brenda is feeling a litte better today, but she still gets tired easily and likes to nap several times a day. Harlan met with friends for dinner (Kate and Gary) at Elsie’s (new location).

I’d describe the dinner in lovely detail, but Kate sometimes reads the blogs and has already commented on how much we seem to focus on food in these things!

We woke up a bit after 10 and headed off for breakfast at the Original Pancake House. From there we ran errands (some mail, getting the spare tire fixed) and then headed back to Tom and Mary’s so Brenda could have a good nap.

We had a quiet dinner and chatted with Mary (Tom was working in Houston today).

That’s about it, as far as I can remember.

We left the hotel around 11 this morning and went to an IHOP for breakfast. Brenda had chicken noodle soup. Just before Brenham Harlan remembered where he was and, with a quick phone call to remember the name, we took a short detour to Royers Cafe for some of their amazing pies (we picked up one coconut chess, one pecan, and a tee-shirt).

We made it to Tom and Mary’s house a little after 3pm, and after a good hour or more of conversation, Brenda headed to bed for a nap. Around 8, she was up again and hungry, so we ordered pizza to go from Mangia (good stuff!) and Harlan and Tom had a Moose Drool brown ale (Harlan brought a case of the stuff for Tom from Jackson).

More conversation after dinner, and we’re looking forward to another evening of decent sleep.

Brenda got lots of good sleep last night, so we checked out of the hotel about noon and started heading to Austin. We decided to skip New Orleans for this trip.

We passed thru Beamont toward Houston when the left rear tire of the car fell apart. We pulled over to the side of the road and called Hertz, and they called the GM service folks who spent a fair amount of time trying to find somebody to come out and change the tire (they couldn’t find us on their maps).

The tow truck arrived and the guy was able to get the old wheel off and get the spare down, but the jacking point he was able to use left the car with about 1″ less than he needed to get the new tire installed. As his truck was parked on the service road next to the highway, he decided he’d cross the grassy bit and simply lift the car with his tow bar. He got stuck in the grassy bit. A while later one of his work buddies showed up with a 4×4 250 pickup truck and got the tow truck where it needed to be.

A bit later we were on our way (with clear instructions from Hertz that they needed to see the dead tire to decide if they would pay for this or not). As it was already about 9pm we decided to stay in Houston tonight and head to Austin in the morning.

Brenda says that if she gets enough good sleep today and tonight that we’ll be moving on to Texas in the morning.

We’re feeling a little better today, but are still resting. We expect we’ll continue on our way on Friday, probably stopping for lunch in New Orleans and then heading toward Austin (we may stop around Houston depending on how tired we get from the drive).

Brenda has a touch of flu and Harlan still has frog voice and sniffles, so we pretty much stayed in the hotel today. When we leave, we’re probably going to skip New Orleans and head to Houston.

We left the hotel about noon. Brenda had a little sore throat and a slightly stuffed-up head. Harlan had “frog voice”. We basically drove, and realized that we’d be crossing into Central Time today, which gave us an extra hour of sunlight.

We found a hotel outside of Mobile AL, and stayed there. This should make tomorrow’s trip to New Orleans a bit easier.

We’re just a bit tired and are resting today.

We woke up and checked out of the hotel just before 11am. We went over to Cookie and Art’s place and rearranged the car. About 12:30, we went to lunch at Big Al’s (near as we can remember) and had great chicken noodle soup and some sandwiches.

We headed back over to Cookie and Art’s place and looked at more pictures, took some pictures (nice orchids!) and chatted until nearly 5pm. Hitting the road, we drove back to Tampa where we had another dinner reservation at Bern’s Steak House at 9pm. We got to our hotel about 8:15pm, checked in, changed, and headed over to dinner. We won’t bore you with the spectacular details. We left the restaurant jsut before midnight and headed back to the hotel, where Brenda paid some bills online and then Harlan got the web logs updated.

We’re hoping to get more pictures uploaded tomorrow night…

We slept in again and got to Cookie and Art’s place around noon. We went out for breakfast, then headed over to the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary for a hike. Really interesting place – lots of birds (the best birdwatching we’ve had so far) but we got there late on a cloudy day so the ‘gators were not out.

We headed back in to town and did some gawking at the local high-end real-estate just before dinner, where we had salmon that Cookie and Art caught on their last trip to Canada. Fortunately there was no ice cream that night. Heading back to their place, we watched some of the Academy Awards and looked at more pictures.

As before, we got back to the hotel around Midnight.