Big Trip Part 2… by Gimli

As BG told you last time, we got to a truck stop between San Antonio and Houston by Tuesday night. We had traveled 640 miles that day, even WITH the 5 hours we spent with them working on the truck, and were pretty tired! It’s a bit hard to sleep with the truck roaring and bouncing along!

We thought that it had been a hectic ride up to that point, but then came WEDNESDAY!!! We had a “long way to go and a short time to get there…” so Papa got up very early, and took off again, while Grammy tried to get a little more sleep in her rolling, pitching bed.

During the nights, Pippin slept in the top bunk with Papa, while I slept between the wall and Grammy’s back. If Grandma OC hadn’t been at Mango’s Mansion, she would have slept between Grammy’s feet, and Unca BG slept on a quilt on top of the fridge area where Pippin rides during the day.


Anyway, on Wednesday, we drove through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and into Lake City, Florida

Grammy was NOT impressed with Louisiana… at least from Hwy I-10! All we saw was dead, mossy trees and swamp… for MILES and MILES! She thought it would be a terribly depressing place to live, and I thought it would too because there wasn’t any place to run and play! She said we couldn’t even swim in it because there were alligators all over, and I don’t know what an alligator is, but she made it sound really scary!


All through Mississippi and Alabama there was the most HORRIBLE storm that Grammy says she’s EVER seen! We could only go 35 miles an hour at times because Papa could only see two white lines in front of us with all the heavy rain! We looked like we were on the back side of a waterfall when looking out of the windshield sometimes.

Grammy was really praying hard… especially after it got dark because then the storm got REALLY BAD! There was lightning bolts every 2-3 SECONDS during one half hour period, and it was hitting so close that the truck was shaking with the thunder! We couldn’t pull over because we were afraid we didn’t have enough time to get to Florida as it was.

It’s a good thing that God was watching over us because we almost got in an accident a couple of times! A truck stopped RIGHT IN FRONT OF US, and our brakes were wet and we ALMOST didn’t stop on time! Missed him by about 2 inches! He’d had to stop real quick because of a Mini van that had gotten stalled out in a flooded section of the road. I almost fell off the bed!

Papa was SO TIRED when we crossed into Florida, that we found a truck stop and finally went to bed. He had driven 851 miles in all that day! Poor Papa still had to get up, when it was barely light, to drive the rest of the way to Jacksonville the next day, because the trailer had to be offloaded, in the shipyard, before 4 p.m.

We got there a little after noon and got the trailer offloaded with one hour to spare! Papa was SOOO relieved! We drove about an hour back and then they stopped for a nice dinner at another Cracker Barrel. That’s were they ate dinner almost every night in the towns we were in. A couple of their grand-daughters work in Cracker Barrels, and one of them even travels at times to train the servers when they open new stores.

Papa got us some GREAT Ham Biscuits and then we drove another hour or so and stopped at a nice Rest Stop near Pensacola, FL where we could get out and run and play for a while before going to bed. We traveled 431 miles that day.

Friday, we all got up really late (Papa had been SOOO tired), and Grammy and Papa were VERY sad to find out that their eldest son, had run into a few problems and wasn’t going to be able to drive the 5 hours up to meet with them like he had been planning.

They decided to go ahead and take off and drive back toward Houston, TX so that they could at least get to spend some time with their daughter and her family (3 of their grandsons are there.) Back through Alabama… and Mississippi…

We even went through a place near “Pascagoula,” Miss. and Papa sang a song about a Mississippi Squirrel that terrorized a church in Pascagoula.

We were ready to go SQUIRREL HUNTING, but Papa said we didn’t have time.

We went back through that depressing Louisiana place again and made it back to Orange, Texas before stopping again to sleep (only 417 miles), but we were still quite tired and wanted to rest up before seeing the grandkids on Saturday. We’ll tell you about THAT fun time the next time, OK?

Oh, and by the way, notice my EAR is UP… FINALLY! That is because that “Ear Assassin,” my sister, Mercy, didn’t go on this trip with us!

Grammy note: Sorry this is taking some time to get out but I had 104 vids to work through and edit into pics, etc. so the corgis could tell THIS story…