Road Trip to Houston, Part 3

The fourth day of our trip was sunny and beautiful. It was the perfect day to hit downtown. We ate lunch at Ninfas, our favorite TexMex restaurant, first and then headed downtown.



As we walked around looking for a high rise building with an observation deck, I snapped these shots of the reflections of the sky scrapers on sky scrapers.

Finding an observation deck turned out to be as easy as walking into a building and asking the security guard who pointed us in the right direction: up.



Snapshots of the seemingly endless sprawl of Houston.


An empty Minute Maid Park with an open roof.

Road Trip to Houston Part 2

The second day of our visit in Houston, the weather was gloomy and rainy; a typical March day in Houston. We were staying with my grandfather in Deer Park near the San Jacinto Monument. We decided to visit the monument and give Carl a crash course in Texas history. It was here the Texas rebels defeated Santa Anna and became an independent nation in 1836.




We went to the top floor of the monument after looking at the relics of the long ago war and had a great view of the surrounding oil refineries.


The USS Texas battleship is docked in the bay here as well. You can take a tour of it but it was raining pretty hard at that point and neither one of us felt like getting out of the car and taking a walk in the rain to board the ship. This picture was taken from the top of the monument.

Road Trip to Houston

Carl and I hit the road on March 8th at 7am and headed down 66 through the pouring rain on our way to Houston for a weeklong visit. Once we hit the Tennessee border, the rain abated and we made our first driver switch at a rest stop across from a giant guitar just as the snow started. Thankfully, we drove over the border into Georgia then on into Alabama and the bad weather was over. Nothing but blue skies and rays of sun. The rest of our drive was blissfully uneventful. We made our way down to Mississippi and stayed overnight in Meridian.

Back on the road early in the morning, we were both excited when we crossed the border into Louisiana. Okay, I was probably more excited than Carl to be so close to my home, but I know he was ready to get to our destination and out of our tiny car. In the picture below you can see the continuous 18 mile stretch of I-10 that runs through the Atchafalaya Basin through the reflection of Carls book.

By the time we made it to the Texas border, I was exhausted from driving but too excited to nap. We were only hours from my city and I could hardly wait to get there. We were fairly giddy as we drove through the rice fields and crawdaddy farms barreling on towards Houston.