We began our morning with a beautiful sunrise over Galveston Bay.  I even managed to get some good pictures of it. Once everyone was up, we hit the road as early as we could to try to avoid Houston traffic.  Today was our longest travel day, spending about 10 hours on the road (including charging time). We traveled in 4 different states, starting in TX, then on through LA, and MS, ending up in AL.  We are spending 3 nights in a beach house right on the water in Dauphin Island, Alabama.

Along the way, we mostly just drove.  We saw some rice fields out the windows of the car, lots of trees, and lots of water.  Louisiana had so much water. At one point, we spent about 5 miles driving on bridges elevated above swampy bayou.  We also crossed several rivers on huge bridges high enough for ships to pass under. Most of them were so tall that it felt like we were on a roller coaster climbing up and up and up.  It was a tiny bit scary.

During our charging stop in Baton Rouge, we tasted some classic Louisiana fare at Acme Oyster House.  We each had a Po-Boy sandwich. They were okay. But, we all thought our sides were much better. Mom had seafood gumbo.  I had hush puppies, and Dad had the most amazing sweet potato fries.

We also stopped in Mississippi in the town that Mom spent some time helping with the Hurricane Katrina cleanup back in 2006: Waveland, MS.  We stopped at the city’s public beach, which clearly had nice, new facilities, set up on stilts. All the houses in the area were up on stilts.  A few of the lots were still empty. It was good to see that people were learning from the storm and seemed to be better prepared for the next one.

We arrived at our beach house in Dauphin Island just as the sun was setting.  It was a pretty sunset. And our beach house is pretty amazing. Mom and I stood outside after full dark and listened to the waves crashing out front and watching the stars above.  There are lots of oil rigs (we counted 13) off shore out front. Some are not that far away.

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