The Road Home

August 26th- 28th

We left Fort Stockton, Texas, early on Sunday morning. Our destination for today was the Fort Worth area.  As mentioned in the previous blog, we had planned to take I-10 to San Antonio and the Gulf Coast.  However, with Tropical Storm Isaac churning in the gulf, we decided to take I-20 instead.  I-10 basically runs along the southern quarter of the Gulf States, and I-20 the northern quarter, so that route would keep us further from harms way and, hopefully, allow us to miss most of the rain.

We traveled primarily through desert (so what else is new?), reaching the Fort Worth area around 5pm.  The next day, Monday, dawned clear and sunny.  Today we hoped to reach Birmingham, Alabama.  This area had a lot of grasslands and grazing cattle- nice to see green!  I-20 takes a northern turn just before Birmingham, which would put us 100 miles further north.  It was a long day, spending 10 hours on the road.  We took a long lunch break where I-20 crosses the Mississippi River into Vicksburg, Mississippi.  For us, crossing this iconic river is always an event to celebrate, whichever direction, east or west, it happens to be.  It symbolizes "west" versus "east for us.  We stopped at a Visitor Center right on the river to ask for advice finding a nice lunch place with a view of the river.  Apparently, only casinos have the right to that view.... She directed us to one right done the street (actually in the middle of a residential neighborhood!) that had a good lunch buffet and a gorgeous view.  After lunch, we spent a few minutes taking photos of a tugboat pushing two barges.

The remainder of this lovely day was spent driving.  At one point, I noticed a lot of power company trucks headed south on I-20.  I have no doubt they were headed for the Gulf coast.  I actually counted 156 trucks from the same power company, and about 25 or so from various other companies.  Amazing that one company would have that many trucks to send!

Bridge over Mississippi River, Vicksburg, MS

Mississippi Tugboat

"Sittin' on the dock of the bay..."

Bananas!

Banana tree next to the house

We had no sooner got the car packed on Tuesday morning when it started to rain, coming down pretty steadily between Birmingham and Atlanta, Georgia.  At that point, we began to get intermittent sun and rain, so the remainder of the trip was not bad.  We arrived around 5pm.  The house, as always for me when I have been gone for some time, felt strange, almost as if the size perspectives were off.  Didn't take long for it to feel like home again- something about the hum of the washer and dryer....  One big surprise (no, the deer did not stop eating all our plants!)- our banana tree has actually produced a bunch of bananas!  Now we just need to find out how to get them to ripen before it gets cold.  Dale wants to set up a fruit stand out front.  Sure the neighbors will approve!