09-15AUG12 - Houma, LA (father & son road trip)

Thursday morning, 09AUG, Dan & son, Joe, departed Sultan, WA, to drive back to Houma, LA. Turns out this year for his yearly “free trip” to the Pacific NW, Joe decided to drive his truck by himself all the way to our house in Sultan, WA, rather than using our airline miles for a plane trip! After driving more than forty hours by himself he pulled into our driveway much to our surprise. We decided that he would not repeat the marathon drive on his return to Houma; & Dan would drive with him & then fly back to SeaTac airport.

So Thursday they hit the road. They drove until 5AM Friday before stopping in Cheyenne, WY, to find a motel. Turns out that the oil industry is also doing pretty good in the local area & most of the motels are booked in advance by the oil companies. They ended up staying at an older motel called the Hitching Post (not recommended!).

Getting back on the road Friday at noon was another hard day of driving with a nice hamburger dinner at Spangles (a family owned chain in Kansas - highly recommended!). Since Joe & Dan wanted to make the fastest time possible, they stuck mostly to the interstates. In fact the GPS & MapQuest both recommended the same route, all of it on interstates. The route eventually placed them on I-35 South to Dallas, & then would have taken them on I-20 East to Louisiana. But late Friday night somewhere in Kansas, the GPS “changed its mind” & had them get off I-35 and take Oklahoma toll roads to Tulsa? (Must have had something to do with being in the land of Oz?)

This not only ended up costing them time & money, but eventually dumped them into the heart of downtown Tulsa, OK. Because the toll road was being rebuilt & they missed the detour signs; costing them over a half hour wandering the deserted streets of Tulsa. After escaping Tulsa the GPS put us back on the toll roads of Oklahoma where they eventually found a Days Inn in Paris, TX, at 3AM Saturday morning. Back on the road at noon Saturday, they completed the drive into Houma at 6:30PM. The drive took a little over 41 hours on the road, & covered 2630 miles!

http://spanglesinc.com

Sunday, 12AUG, Dan helped Joe finish & install a new gate to his backyard. Oh yeah, we forgot to mention in our previous BLOG entries, Joe is now a home owner (or rather a mortgage owner)! That evening they visited Rebecca & our grandson Jaxson J Pitre for a delicious lasagna dinner. The next couple of days were spent doing not much of anything other than a great steak BBQ prepared by Joe on Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning, 15AUG, Joe took Dan to New Orleans airport for his flight back to Seattle to rejoin Corrie.