Evacuation trip report for Rita (LONG!)

[Rajah]

So, you want to know what it’s like to participate in the evacuation of the 4th largest city in the US? I don’t recommend it.

This is fairly long and detailed, but for those who want the cliffs notes:
Monday: get hurricane warning, make reservations, buy supplies
Tuesday: finalize reservations and plans, prepare office
Wednesday: Prepare houses, pack up, and leave town
Thursday: Drive. Until 1am. 28 hours on the road. 40-41 hours of no sleep.
Friday: Sleep and watch the hurricane.
Saturday: Check out our alternative place to stay
Sunday: Move to alternative place to stay
Monday: Visit with friends in town
Tuesday: Pack up again and drive home
Wednesday: Sleep.
Thursday: Finally go back to work

For those who want more, read on. And grab some popcorn.

The insanity started on Monday, Sept 19th when Hurricane Rita was pounding the Keys and thought to be heading to Houston. At that time, she wasn’t even up to a cat 1 yet, but she was expected to hit Cat 1 soon.

My mom thought ahead, seeing that projected track would put Houston dead-center, and called for a hotel in Fredericksburg, TX. We’ve done this part of the song and dance before, and that was as far out as we’ve had to look before to find a hotel that would accept pets. And no way were we leaving our fur-babies behind. Furthermore, my mom has a friend who lives between Fredericksburg and Blanco who said she’d help us with long-term plans if necessary, and Fredericksburg is about half-way between Houston and my Uncle’s house, where my mom planned to go for long-long term evacuation if Houston went the way of New Orleans. And my Uncle’s was on the way to my grandparents’, where Michael and I planned to go for our long-long term evacuation if necessary. Furthermore, Fredericksburg was far enough inland and on high ground so that even if the storm made Cat 5 and hit with a dead-line pointed at Fredericksburg, we’d be fine. So despite Michael’s complaints about it being too far, Fredericksburg made good sense.

My mom was able to get us reservations at a Quality Inn in town, so we had our bases covered. Good thing, too, because by the time I left work that evening, word around town was that places were already starting to fill up. This was much earlier than has happened in the past – apparently Katrina had a lot of people spooked (us included).

My plan was to work late on Monday so that I wouldn’t miss as much work later in the week if it became necessary, but a phone call around the time that I could leave changed my mind. It was my mom, and her local grocery store was already running out of canned goods and bottled water. With 6 cats and 2 of us in our house, we’d need a lot of bottled water if Rita hit and we stayed. And our plan was Cat2 or below, we stay. Cat 3 or above, we bolt.

So after 8 hours instead of my intended 9 or so, I took off running and hit my local HEB. Luckily, though the shelves were starting to show signs of being picked over, they still had enough of my preferred water and the canned goods to get us through a week of no power just in case. I picked up a mixture of canned ravioli, canned pasta, canned soups, canned veggies, tuna, packaged chicken, bean dip, cheese dip, tortillas… things that either didn’t need to be refrigerated or we would eat in one sitting after opening, but enough different things to give us some variation in diet.

Oddly enough, despite the undercurrent of panic, the stores were pretty calm. At least mine was. Yes, there were lines and things were fairly crowded, but I’ve been there when there were more crowds on a Sunday afternoon than I hit that evening, and every person I saw was polite and patient about the lines.

Stocked up for the week (or month or two if we didn’t need the canned goods for a hurricane), I headed home and continued about my business.

The next day, things had jumped from caution to bad. By around lunch, Rita was a category 2 and there wasn’t a hotel room to be found in Austin or San Antonio. Boy were we happy we had our reservations all ready. Furthermore, my best friends who had been planning to fly to Chicago that weekend were in a panic about what to do. They finally decided to drive and take their cats instead of fly and worry about them. Michael and I would have taken their cats with us, but we all felt that for all involved, it was best for their cats to stay with them.

By the time I got off of work, there was a mandatory evacuation order for my entire county, and Houston was still wearing a big bullseye for this hurricane. So much for the idea that if it stayed 2 or below, we’d stick it out.

Michael worked from home on Tuesday, so was able to start getting the house prepared. Getting his items packed (somewhat), moving electronics and stuff that was on the floor of the ground floor up to the second story, running some errands for Coleman stoves and the like…

I, however, was scheduled to teach a class at my embroidery guild that evening and the last I’d heard, at least 4 people were still planning to attend. Despite my mom’s objections, I decided to go anyway at least for a brief period. At most, we’d have the class. At least, it would be a brief respite from the panic of preparing the office for the hurricane.

So, I rushed through the office preps for the hurricane, told the boss I wouldn’t be in on Wed due to the mandatory evacuation and the preps that I needed to do at home and at my mom’s house, then headed out to the guild.

We had a brief meeting, where we mostly chatted about hurricanes and what it would take to evac or not. Then it was time for a few errands. First, Petsmart to pick up some harnesses for the cats and a covered litterbox. My friends had a spare large wire cage that wouldn’t fit in any of their vehicles, but would fit in the back of my mom’s Explorer, which I planned to drive. It was even large enough to set up a litterbox in.

After my long stop at Petsmart, where people were going rather insane trying to find carriers and such (how do you have pets and not have a carrier for them?), I headed back to the office to pick up my betta before going to my mom’s. There, I swapped out my car (as deemed the most expendable of our vehicles and the one with the least cargo room) for her Explorer (which I would drive), helped her take care of a couple of quick things at her house, then rushed home to start my own packing.

With my friends help, Michael and I got our boards up that evening, and otherwise I stayed up until nearly 3am preparing to leave and for the worst. Items we wanted to save but couldn’t fit with us were stuffed into closets, away from windows, into plastic bags, and onto the second floor. I didn’t bother with doing laundry, I just stuffed some clothes (a combination of comfort and style in case I had to find work elsewhere) into a suitcase and spent the rest of my time packing up the mementos I didn’t want to lose and things we needed for the kitties.

I’d hoped to have the Explorer pretty much packed before I went to bed, but it wasn’t to be. Michael had shut down emotionally and physically by midnight and was stuck glued to CNN and the weather channel, watching as this thing climbed to a cat 4. He finally went to bed an hour before I did.

I spoke to my mom briefly making plans for tomorrow before I crashed as well, and I actually slept pretty well considering the circumstances.

Our plan was to get up at 7 Thursday morning, throw the last items into the Explorer and Michael’s CRV (we had to take both to fit all the pets in safely and comfortably), then hurry to my mom’s.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

I got up at 7:30 after snoozing the alarm, called my mom to say I really needed another hour or so of sleep before I tried driving for 12 hours (I WISH!), and she agreed. So we all went back to bed.

Michael and I finally got up at 9, and I started to pack the Explorer and discovered that Michael hadn’t even loaded the CRV yet. ARGH!

(Though, frustrating as it was, I had to feel sorry for him. He was in shock, frankly. He loves Houston as much as I hate it, and this has always been his home. There had never been an evacuation order in his life for anything more than Galveston Island, and with how big Rita was becoming, it was really dealing a blow to him. I have to keep that in mind with my reactions to his actions at times.)

And, to top things off, Michael was sick this morning. Bleah.

So, instead of getting out of the house by 11, we were packing and loading until 1. Finally, though, it was down to the cats and us. This was going to be the fun part, I thought. How to get makeshift harnesses on 6 cats and get these 6 cats out to the cages when said cats have only ever worn a harness once if ever and never been carried outside? And the harnesses had to be makeshift because Petsmart was sold out of harnesses by the time I got there, so I bought 2 collars per cat and was going to have to jury-rig harnesses for the cats. Collars alone wouldn’t cut it.

Not surprisingly, all the kitties were hanging around pretty close to what we were doing, so I didn’t have to hunt them down at least. I picked up our black 1-year old first, Bagheera, just because he was the one walking closest as I grabbed the first two collars. And amazingly, he sat quite still and was very patient with me as I tried one method after another before finally settling on snapping the collars together into one long string and winding it in a figure-8 around the neck and chest with the cross at the shoulderblades. The others watched as I prepared him, then watched anxiously as I took him outside with one hand hooked into the harness as I held him close. He was a very good boy, crying as soon as we stepped out the door but not struggling, and I had no trouble getting him into the cage.

Okay, one down. Now to catch the next cat.

Only when I walked inside, I didn’t have to catch anyone. Ana, Bagheera’s sister, was sitting on the chair waiting for me.

Okay, Ana next. She gave me no more trouble than Bagheera did.

Then Gabi, who was sitting next to the chair when I walked in.

And so it went for all of our kitties. Every one of them was waiting for me when I walked back in after taking the previous cat out to the car. And the only cat to give me any trouble at all was Leo, who squirmed out of my arms down to the driveway and crouched down immediately. He didn’t try to run, he was just scared.

They obviously knew something was up and that they wanted to go with us, because these are the same cats that I frequently have to fight to trim nails. And getting them into carriers to take to the vet is always an adventure.

Anyway, with the cats loaded and one last run through the house, Michael and I set off on the 10 minutes journey to my mom’s.

An hour later, we finally arrive. Yup, already ran into huge traffic and we weren’t even out of the suburbs yet.

We brought all the kitties into my mom’s house while we got her packed up and ate lunch from Popeye’s Chicken (the only fast food joint that was still open when we drove up). Taking the kitties inside proved to be a good thing because we discovered that my mom had 3 spare leashes (old ones from her Shih Tzu from either the kennel or the vet), which would prove to be very useful over the next several days. Also, we discovered that we really needed a more portable way to provide a cave or hiding place for the kitties for when they were in a new area. Skye and Sienna had their large carrier which was their cage, but the “family’s” cage (Leo and Gabi, who are Ana and Bagheera’s parents, and Ana and Bagheera) was too big to move in and out of the car. So, we threw a couple of my mom’s clothes baskets and a couple of plastic crates into the CRV after discovering they worked pretty well as makeshift cages. We also had to retrieve Ana from behind the entertainment unit and tighten her harness (and everyone else’s after her escape act) – another good lesson learned in a safe place.

The next several hours were spent boarding up my mom’s house and helping her pack then load up her car and what else we could into the CRV, then teaching her how to use the walkie talkie that we’d borrowed from my friends (we have a pair, so does my mom, but we couldn’t find any of them. Ugh! My friends were only taking one vehicle, so wouldn’t need them.).

By the time we finally got on the road, it was nearly 9pm and we were in for what we expected would be a 12 hour drive. We stopped at a Shell station to top off the tanks, then hit the road.

Once we got onto Highway 6 (which didn’t take us long to reach at all, maybe 20 minutes vs the usual 10), I made several phone calls to family and friends outside of the area to update them and to my friends who were also evacuating to see if they made it on the road. They ended up leaving 30 minutes behind us.

What followed was the longest drive of my life, and I’m not talking in distance. I am absolutely positive that my mom and I both had guardian angels with us on this drive, helping us stay safe and keeping our energy boosted. Because neither my mom nor I have much stamina, neither of us even under the best or worst of conditions have ever been able to go longer than about 20 hours of go-go-go if that, and my mom has some health problems that tend to act up (like her injured arm) if she drives for more than a few hours at a time. Despite the past history and having the deck stacked against us health-wise, we were both able to stay awake and alert with little to no danger of dozing off until we hit the hotel.

But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The night started out pretty much as I’d anticipated, with taillights as far as the eye could see. Farther, even. And traffic was moving pretty much at a crawl. We stopped once close to Michael’s parents’ house to walk the dog and stretch our legs. This was about 4 hours in or so, I lost count. All I know is it was late, it wasn’t 2am yet, and we had to dissuade Michael from just turning off to go harbor at his parents. As it turns out, he would have been fine, but at the time Rita had built up to a full blown Cat 5, Galveston was still the target, and Michael’s parents almost had flooding with Alison (I think – the major tropical storm that came into Houston and flooded all over back in 2001 or so), and frankly their neighborhood isn’t the safest crime-wise. I was not comfortable with evacuating there.

So, after a stop at a nearby Chevron or Shell or something, we hit the road again. And by the time we got to the First Colony area (6 and 59, usually about an hour’s drive) it was approaching 2am and my mom and I needed to use the restroom again. Michael didn’t, so I made the mistake of telling him to go on ahead and we’d catch up at the next stop. That was the last time we saw Michael for the next 14 hours or so.

We spent the next 30 minutes or so at different gas stations. My mom pulled into a Chevron on the right side of the street that still had gas. I was ahead of her and had pulled a u-turn to stop in the Exxon across the street (on the left) that had almost no lines but did have some form of gas. I had no wait for a restroom, she had about a 15 person wait. I did have to go to 3 pumps to finish topping off the tank and get it to accept my debit card (by the way, if you try to do 2 purchases of about 15 cents, cancel the purchases because there’s no gas of that grade and you don’t realize you can just hit the button to change grades, then try to make a 3rd purchase, it won’t let you), but that was better than the lines and crowds my mom was fighting.

By the time I finished topping off (only about 2 gallons, if that) and using the restroom, my mom had only just gotten through the line to fill up at her stop. Where she also watched a fist-fight almost break out over gas, and had to fight with a broken pump that spilled gas all over her shoes.

I swear it took me 10 minutes or more just to get across the street and through that mess of a parking lot in order to park next to her (she was even parked at the Kwik Car next door). And then, people were getting rough enough acting outside (patience was obviously wearing thin out there already) that I was afraid to get out of the car unless I had to.

Finally, after dodging yet another near-fight inside the gas station, my mom was clear and ready to go and we hit the road yet again. Only now, Michael was a good 30-45 minutes ahead of us. Whee.

Nothing much more happened through the rest of the night of note. Other than that by dawn, we weren’t even to 290 and 6 (our evacuation route), and that even with Michael stopping to get breakfast and a drink in a coffee shop, we still didn’t catch up to him. And that my mom and I were able to find gas at one more station to top off once more, even though it was less than a gallon each.

When all was said and done, it took us over 12 hours to get from her house to 6 and 290 – what is usually approximately an hour drive. We were averaging about 5-10 mph during the night, and by dawn we hit traffic that was moving at 1-2 mph if we were lucky. And we still hadn’t caught up with Michael. And to make matters worse, Rita was now a catastrophic cat 5 (if there were such a thing as a cat 6, Rita would have been one) still bearing down on Houston, and cell phones weren’t working ¾ of the time.

In the meantime, my friends who had also evacuated 30 minutes after us had a different idea. Their goal was Chicago, so they took off east while most of the rest of Houston was heading north and west. By about 3am, they were already just across the border into Louisiana and able to pull over into a parking lot and sleep. By about 6am, when I heard the storm might turn toward Beaumont and they were evacuating areas closer to where my friends had stopped, I called them to wake them up and tell them to move before they got caught in the same traffic jam we were in.

By mid afternoon, my friends were stopped safe and sound in Memphis.

We still hadn’t made it out of the Houston city limits.

Furthermore, my mom and I still hadn’t caught up with Michael. He’d stopped for about 30 minutes to wait for us at a gas station (closed, no gas, but at least there was shade) but it was getting too hot to safely leave the kitties (Skye and Sienna) in the car with no A/C even with the door open, so we decided if he was going to use the gas to run the A/C, he’d be better off on the road.

It took us over an hour to get the 1 mile or so from where we were to where Michael had stopped.

This trend continued for the next several hours as we all inched our way down highway 290 heading for Austin. Temperatures climbed into record highs. Though the radio was reporting something like 100-105, the thermometer in the Explorer (on the blacktop, in direct sun, trapped among wall-to-wall cars) reached a high of 119. And people were stopped on the side of the road unable to go any farther either due to running out of gas or the temperature or other issues. And every scrap of shade, what little there was, had a car parked under it with people napping in their cars or on the ground outside of their cars.

And the idea of taking back roads? Nope. They blocked off the exits for most of the back roads until you reached Brenham (about 70 miles from the last place my mom and I had topped off). Gotta use the restroom? If you’re lucky, you’ll find a place where you can get off and find an open business with a public restroom. If not, you did it on the side of the road. We were lucky.

Want food? Good luck. Most of the fast food places were closed, assuming you could even get off.

Need a drink? Hope you brought it with you.

Luckily, thanks to my mom’s experiences traveling as a kid, we were prepared. We had at least 2 gallons of water in each car. Water was down for the kitties. We had canned goods that we could eat straight from the can (which my mom and I did for lunch), and boxes of granola bars and other quick munchies for a brief burst of energy. She learned to have all of that ready on long trips after her months living in Alaska, and passed that experience on to me. So we were lucky.

We also had to stop about every hour or two to walk the dog (not to mention get up and walk around ourselves), and early on in the morning I discovered that the “family” (the kitties in my car) weren’t drinking the water that was down. Luckily, we found this out when we stopped for breakfast (again we were lucky – we hit a Chick Fil A that was open and serving breakfast – this was before we hit 290) so we were able to grab an extra straw. From then on, every stop involved a long enough break to pull all the kitties out of the cage one by one and try to force a straw’s worth of water down them. Usually more ended up on their face or me than in their mouths, but it was enough to keep them from getting heat stroke.

One of the times that I pulled over in the middle of 290 to give the kitties water, we encountered one of the rescue vehicles that the state was sending around. It was just a pickup with some water and gas for people stranded. They were very nice and very helpful. Wouldn’t accept “nope, we’re fine” from us until we’d actually carried on enough of a conversation to show that we were indeed conscious and responsive, and checked our gas situation (we were both still above half a tank, which was WAY better than some people on the road) and that we had enough water to drink. They also very kindly told us where we would be able to find gas (or might, anyway) once we hit Brenham.

And speaking of Brenham, we finally got there around 6pm and that was when we finally, finally caught up with Michael. Once he had a full gas tank and a place to park in the shade with it cooling off and a spot where he knew for certain that we’d be coming, he finally stopped to wait for us. And was waiting there for a good 45 minutes.

It still took us 30 minutes or more to just go through the line to get to the pump, and we had the closest I’ve ever come to ramming another car out of anger. By this point, we’d been up for over 30 hours straight, and I was in NO mood to have others pushing and shoving their way in front of us in the line for the gas station. Which is what one family did. It took all my self control not to get into my own road rage battle with those pushy so-and-so’s, and I normally don’t succumb to road rage.

But, we held back and just vented to each other on the radios, got our gas, used the restroom, and met up with Michael in the next parking lot over.

At that point, I said that was IT. I was NOT sitting on 290 for the rest of the drive into Austin at that rate. We wouldn’t get there by dawn at the rate we were moving, and my mom and I couldn’t handle another 20 hours on the road. Nor could we just take a nap, because we both knew that once we stopped, we’d be DOWN and not able to get going again. A nap would do us both more harm than good by this point.

I’d been studying the map while waiting for my turn at the pump, and I had a plan. In order to get to this station, we were allowed to get off onto the back roads finally. Now that we were in the town streets, we could get across 290 and as long as we didn’t try getting back ON 290, we’d be okay. So we crossed under 290 and hit the back roads.

FINALLY, we were able to go the speed limit, and it was such a nice break from the monotony of seeing nothing but taillights as far as the eye could see. We saw greenery, rolling pastures, a nice sunset, and NO OTHER CARS. We even saw a small herd of deer at one point. It was very serene, and much needed to calm our nerves and refresh our minds just a bit.

We stopped briefly in the tiny town of Round Top (a very cute town that we want to go back to just to visit) at a restaurant there. My mom and I got a sandwich (Michael had already eaten at the gas station) and used the restroom, we giggled at the lady walking the Great Dane and the Chihuahua, then we continued on down the road. Things were smooth sailing for almost an hour, until we got to 71 and La Grange. And even there, 71 was moving much better than 290 until we got about 5 miles from Bastrop. At that point, we hit the 1-2 mph traffic again. And I whipped out the map again.

Inch forward, hit the break, read the map.
Inch forward, hit the break, read the map.
Inch forward, hit the break, read the map.
Inch forward, hit the break, read the map.
Inch forward, hit the break, read the map.

….

Bored with that paragraph yet? Try actually doing it.

But, in about 30 minutes I had an alternate route planned out yet again and was directing my mom and Michael over to the side of the road to walk them through the plan and see if they agreed. They didn’t have much to say other than get us out of this mess, so I trekked back to my car and called my friends in Phoenix to check roads and the maps on mapquest to see if that was the best plan.

After about 30 minutes on the phone with them, we had the route potentially finalized, but then I realized that the person we should have been talking to was my mom’s friend. They lived in the area, and her husband was a cop, so they knew the routes and knew the current construction.

So my next phone call was to my mom’s friend.

First time I’d ever spoken to her, and after identifying that I was the daughter and not my mom, she immediately went into plan mode.

“Okay, where are you?”

“Here”

“Good. Here’s what you’re going to do…”

Between interruptions from my mom on the walkie talkie, Michael on the cell phone, other friends calling, and traffic, I got the route out of her. And after a close call where my mom’s exhaustion was starting to kick in and I had to shout her through the correct turn at the light (getting separated in that mess, at night, after over 36 hours of no sleep would have been a disaster), we were able to find a gas station where we could fill up, get back together (several cars had gotten between my mom and me), and get on the road.

My mom was clearly running out of steam fast, and I wasn’t that far behind her. Michael, even though he’d gotten a couple of naps, wasn’t any better off than we were. We had to get to the hotel and get there fast.

Thankfully, my mom’s friend’s route worked out beautifully. Once we were able to get on 21 heading into San Marcos, we had smooth sailing from there. Very little traffic except when going through San Marcos itself, and that was just normal city traffic. The route was clearly marked and easy for our tired brains to handle. Once we got past San Marcos, the roads turned hilly and windey, but that was okay because it’s easier to stay awake on windey (how do you spell that, anyway – curvy) roads than it is on straight roads.

Our biggest danger went from falling asleep and hitting the cars in front of us to having to watch out for deer. And thankfully, my mom’s friend had warned me about the deer. Since I had point, I was the one jumping at shadows and trying to tell in my fogged brain what was a shadow or streetlight verses what was a deer or headlights. We did indeed see about 10 deer on the last stretch of the road, including having to come to a halt a couple of times for the deer to get out of the road, so I was glad that she’d warned me. I’d been watching anyway, but knowing the deer weren’t just a possibility but a probability in that area made me more alert.

Finally, at 1am, after being up for 40 straight hours and 28 straight hours on the road, we found our hotel. An hour or so later, we were checked in, unloaded, friends and family called, and ready to finally, finally, sleep for a week.

As for the kitties… Skye and Sienna went up first in their carrier, then we took the family up one by one by hand and hooked their leashes to the carrier then covered them with the clothes baskets / crates for them to hide while we finished unloading. And when we were in for the night, we let them loose.

Sienna stalked out of her carrier like she owned the place and immediately claimed my bed. (We had two doubles, and with the kitties, we opted to sleep separate rather than crowding on one bed. I take up too much room in my tossing and turning to be comfortable sharing a double). If any of the other kitties approached her, they were greeted with a swat and a growl. And if I tried to take her pillow, she growled at me, too. So much for my pillow.

Skye’s first stop was the bathroom. For some reason that we don’t understand, Skye loves bathtubs. If he wants attention or to play, he’ll run into the nearest bathroom with a tub, jump in, and start howling. So his first stop was to go stretch out in the bathtub and start grooming.

Leo and Gabi had the right idea. As soon as they found the air conditioner, they staked it out. Bagheera and Ana, the two scardy-cats at the youngest age, took longer to explore but they found the A/C as well. I wish I’d gotten a picture of all the kitties crowded into the breeze from the A/C, but I was too tired to think of getting one.

By the time we had the lights out and were ready to go to sleep, all the kitties had found the food dish and taken a few bites, and we’d had to refill the water dish once. Seeing them getting the food and water they needed was enough to help me sleep.

Surprisingly, I didn’t sleep as long as I’d expected to. I really still only got about 8 hours before I was awake. Not up and active, but awake. And Michael was up before I was. He ran out to the gas station across the street to fill up, to Walmart for some paper plates (we’d gotten out without any, and we needed some to feed the kitties) and some frozen dinners (we had a microwave/fridge combo in our hotel), and came back with McDonalds.

Other than taking my mom out to get some food and fill her car up as well later that afternoon, the only thing we did all day was stay in the room resting, napping, watching CNN, and cuddling the kitties.

The next day, my mom and I left Michael with all the animals and we went to meet my mom’s friend. Turns out her mom’s house was sitting vacant but fully furnished and her mom had agreed to let us use it until we could go home. Her mom is living with her now, but they hadn’t sold the home yet or even gotten it ready to sell. So my mom and I were to meet with my mom’s friend and go see the house.

We did so, and I loved this lady from the moment I spoke to her on the phone. Meeting her in person was even better. She’s quite a character, and a great friend for my mom, and we hit it off quite well. Watching her dance down her driveway with excitement because my mom and I had brought her and her husband a birthday cake was cute, too.

We visited for a while, then found where the house was and got a key, then went back to the hotel to crash. The decision was made that even if we only stayed for a day, we’d save the money on the hotel in favor of staying in the house.

Next day we were up and out of the hotel by noon. This was the only time the kitties really gave us any problem.

Gabi and Sienna were both very well behaved when I took them back down to their carrier and cage. They were both bright-eyed and anxious to look around and sniff around and see what they could see.

Bagheera, Leo, and Ana all squirmed and cried, but gave me no further problem. A good grip on their scruff and their harness and some soothing talking was all I needed to get them to the carrier/cage.

Skye bit my hand.
Hard.
Then hid behind the toilet.

NOWAYNOHOW did he want to be carried out in that scary outside again.

I ran my hand under water (should I have used soap? I keep hearing conflicting reports…), then yelled down to Michael that he was going to have to bring the carrier up to get Skye, then ran more water over my hand and put a Kleenex on it with pressure to stop the bleeding. Yep, I was bleeding. Not bad, but enough to say he did draw blood. First time I’ve ever had one of my cats bite me hard enough to draw blood. I don’t blame him, because he was just scared and I wasn’t listening to his squirming howls of lemmedownlemmedownnoidontwannago. But after that, he was MICHAEL’S cat for the rest of the night.

We’d been planning to stop at Walmart on the way out of town anyway. We just added more to the list to get there. Hydrogen peroxide, Neosporin, cotton pads, and bandaids with silver. I left my mom in Walmart to get the rest of the supplies while I returned to the car to doctor my hand.

Then we resumed the trek to the house and got settled in.

The rest of the trip was pretty much uneventful. My mom and I “momsat” for her friend’s mom (who has Alzheimer’s and can’t be left alone) for an afternoon. Got to see more deer and the ranch they live on. We did a little shopping in Blanco, which is a small town but the square is rather cute. Explored the area briefly, especially down by the river. Tried out the local restaurants. Rested up. Took a much-needed break.

I wasn’t ready to face the drive back, even the normal 5-6 hours it would take, until Tuesday evening. So that’s when Michael and I left. We had to repack the cars so that we could take my mom’s cat and dog home with us so that she could stay and join her friend on their planned trip to an art festival. Since we had word from neighbors that her house was okay and she didn’t have to come back, we saw no reason for her to skip out on the trip she’d been looking forward to for so long.

Michael and I waited until about 5pm to hit the road – we didn’t want to be out in the 100+ heat again since we had the choice. And thankfully, the drive back was no busier than an average weekend drive. So we got home with no problem and in the usual 5-6 hours instead of the 28 hours it took us to get there. And boy were we all ready and happy to be home.

All in all, I’d have to say that despite the troubles, for a first-time thing, this went pretty well. After all, it isn’t easy to evacuate 3.5 MILLION people in a 48 hour period. This was the first time in history it had ever been attempted, to my knowledge. And for the most part, people were very friendly and patient about it. You had the occasional idiot or pushy person, and we did see cops at gas stations a couple of times, but as a whole considering how many people were on the road for so long with so little sleep, people were friendly about it. Really surprised us all.

My mom and I both felt that we absolutely had the Lord watching out for us. Between keeping us awake and our stamina going, and us never getting below half a tank of gas, and no one having any accidents or anything, we sure felt watched over and guided.

But even with that help, this is not something I want to repeat.

Can I pick up my house, my mom’s house, all our stuff in it, and move my job and Michael’s job and go to the hill country?

 

[lynetteSC]

WOW~ What an experience! I am just glad you guys are all safe! I can't imagine how harrowing that would be!

 

[serenity1991]

I need more popcorn....knew I should have brought that Snickers bar too!!

Glad you, your family, and furbabies are safe!

 

[Miss Jasmine]

You know what? I am glad I have to go to work in the case of a hurricane. No way I would go through that.

I'm glad you and your kitties kept safe.

 

[Planogirl]

They blocked off the exits for most of the back roads until you reached Brenham

I don't even begin to understand why they did this.

What an ordeal you had! I can't imagine inching along like that.

 

[Rajah]

I don't even begin to understand why they did this.

Me either.