Well my sister, brother-in-law-, their dog, my cat and myself were on the "crawl" up to Arlington between Dallas and Ft. Worth. We left at about 20:00 on Wed. night along with about 50-100 thousand other people, and it took us 16 hours to get to where 4 or 5 hours usually does; and we consider ourselves lucky. We started off near Nasa Rd. 1 and I-45 and took the HOV lane (high occupancy vehicle lane) from there to Tomball on the north side of town. That only took us about 30-45 minutes because nobody seemed to get on this route. We passed about 60 miles of parking lot that was the Gulf Freeway
. Once that lane ended we took about 10 hours to get from near Bush Intercontinental Airport to Conroe, a trip that usually takes 15 minutes. We stopped there for gas and food. There was mass chaos at both the gas station and the McDonald's parking lot. Some of the poor folks there were in traffic up to 18 hrs. to get there. Once out of Conroe we had some slow downs near Huntsville on up to Buffalo. From there on it was not too bad. We stayed in Arlington with family and returned on Sun. night, heading out at about 19:30. The trip back was not as bad, but we did get some slow traffic once we got to Madisonville. It stayed slow until the south side of Conroe. This time the gas stations were mostly controlled by law enforcement. They would stop traffic into the store and let people in as others left. They also started busting people that tried to make the emergency lanes into their own express lane
. It took us about 7 hours for the return trip. In comparison to some of the stories that I have heard, my mother and step-father included, we were lucky. Quite a few people that left as early as we did went from the frying pan into the fire. They went to places such as Lufkin or Naca....hell I can't spell that town north of Lufkin
. Mostly the Houston-Galveston area dodged a bullet.
PS: To prove that the fates are out to screw me, I had taken vacation on Mon. and Tues. (26 & 27) weeks in advance for a little trip to Lake Charles, LA for some gambling. Good thing I never made the reservations. That area took most of the damage from the storm.
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