Yellow GMC Box truck part 2

 Tuesday morning we went and picked up the box truck.  Other than the Penske App giving us bad direcctions, we found the rental place easy enough and were soon back and sorting wood.    I spent a few minutes on the Pinball machine, getting it ready to move, but knew that was the last thing going on the truck.

The next two days were pretty busy and we finished loading around 4PM on Wed.  We had made arrangements to meet my Sister-in-law (her hubby Jason was helping us) and my neice (who just moved to Austin) for dinner around 6.

4 days of whiskers were starting to annoy me, but Valerie looks great!

Thursday morning, some clean up and were on the road before 10AM..   Traffic sucked of course (it is Austin) and we got about 30 miles in the first hour.   Then we were outside of town and heading down US 290 toward Houston.

Tommy had his own seat up on the dash and was ready to go.   My FIL and his girlfriend wish us safe travels.

Gassing up in Lousiana.  I had to fill up a total of 6 times and we were getting a surprisingly good 14-15 mpg on each fill up.  The longer we drove, the faster I was going.   It had a 75mph speed limiter and once we got on open I-10  It was pretty much on that the whole time and holding up traffic.  Total drive time was about 26 hours with a couple stops over 3 days.

No trip through Cajun Country is complete without a stop for Boudin!   We bought over 10 lbs of Boudin and smoked sausage and a styrofoam cooler to keep it cool.  Tommy working the camera but fails to get published...

We scored this hotel room for $80 out the door in Walker, LA about 15 miles east of Baton Rouge.   We were pretty tired from the previous 2 days and the 10 hour drive.   We had Boudin around 5:30 ish so we just had some snacks and skipped a full dinner.

Up early the next morning and a great breakfast at the hotel.   We were on the road by 9:30 as we were only going to Tallahassee about 380 miles away.    The evening before I messaged my buddy Gary who is in a few bands (4 I can think of off the top of my head), and asked if there was a Friday night gig in Tally.  He said yes so I thought about it for under a minute and booked us a hotel not far from the venue with an easy exit out of town.

The drive was drama free and we were able to see the SS United States again in Mobile!    We didn't stop as the band was starting pretty early at 6:30PM and we lost an hour crossing the time zone.

On my birthday, JT texted me a link to a website that was tracking the ship's movement from Philadelphia to Mobile (pulled by a tugboat).    As it turned out, it was going by South FL pretty much then!   I lamented that I would miss it go by as I had a meeting at work.   As luck would have it, the meeting was canceled at the last minute and I drove directly to the beach.   As I was coming over the bridge I could see it was right there, almost straight out.   I watched it for about 15 minutes waiting for it to get into the sun's refletion on the water to get this shot.   Not the best, but my phone's camera isn't that good.  She was a majesticghost!

Lucy also saw it off of Delray about an hour later as it was going about 5 knots.   Because of the Gulfstream, they had to come in pretty close to shore from Jupiter South so that was good for us.    I also found out later it wasn't planned to be a daylight pass, but rought weather had slowed progresss so it worked out in our favor.

If you don't know about her,  Here is a good primer video of her in her heyday.   Set the Transatlantic crossing record on her maiden trip in 1952 at 3 days and 10 hours for a merchant vessel.  The record still stands today and will probably never be beaten.

We were able to see her from I-10 just fine on the west side of the bay.  We gassed up just shy of the FL border and off we went.   

We arrived at our hotel around 5:30PM and I went to check in.   No one was there!  I waited for 30 minutes until the girl came back.  She apologized and I got checked in.   Now we were late for our date at the Country Club!