The “Down South” Tour
The yearly spring break —--they seemed to roll around faster and faster with each passing year. In 2006, the planning took on a whole new dimension. Mom discovered “.com”.
I see notated for Monday, April 10 that I wrote Royal Sonesta —---Sonesta.com
This must have been a fairly big moment for my trip planning education. Suddenly, I had countless destination possibilities at my fingertips. But where to go?
Hurricane Katrina had hit the gulf coast hard in August, 2005. Who will ever forget the horrific images from that deadly storm? I knew things were still just beginning to dry out along the Gulf Coast but it seemed like a good idea to visit the area and show what support we could with tourism dollars.
We once lived in Houston, our elder son Phil was born there. Although away for years, we still felt a kinship to the Gulf of Mexico region. It seemed logical to start our trip by first visiting Texas friends before making our way home to PA, using I-10 as one of our routes.
There was just one problem. Phil, now 15, meant it when he said a year earlier that he “never wanted to be in a car that long with all of us again!”( see the California Coast blog) . How could we do a traditional spring break trip without including him for the entire drive covering well over 2,000 miles?
The answer was simple.
We couldn’t.
Early in the planning, Phil said he wanted to see his friends in Texas but fly home from Houston where he would spend the rest of the week with his grandparents, Don and Alice.
With that detail in mind, I got busy with the Rand McNally map, deciphering what I hoped would be an interesting route home in a rental car, one way. It didn’t take too long to break our road trip into smaller daily manageable drives, most under 300 miles. Going wild, I booked only two hotels in advance.
On Friday, April 7th, 2006, the adventure began!
After landing at Houston Intercontinental airport (IAH), we picked up our rented Chevrolet Impala (great car, big engine!) and drove to Clear Lake, one of the seemingly thousands of Houston’s sprawling suburbs. In a way, it was going home, especially for Phil. He’d known our friends Bill and Mary Ann and their daughters for as long as he could remember.
Pete and I had very fond memories of Clear Lake City and the surrounding communities of Webster, Seabrook, Kemah, and Nassau Bay. We stayed at the Quality Inn on Nasa Road 1, not far from our friends’ home. The reasonable motel was close to our favorite haunts, including the Johnson Space Center.
Another favorite was the famous watering hole, The Outpost, located right next door to our motel. When you sat inside, you could see thousands of photographs dotting the walls. It appeared likely that it was here where most of NASA’s astronauts might have gathered after a long day at work (or space?). Scenes from the movie Space Cowboys were shot inside this bar. The saloon’s fantastic swinging doors left little to the imagination. We had no idea that while visiting (we only walked in for a short while with the boys), that this would be our last glimpse of the Outpost. Sadly, the bar closed in January, 2010; burning to the ground later in the year on October 15th.
Thankfully the weather was fabulous and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. On Sunday morning, we headed for Rockport, Texas for an overnight stay with our friends John and Larie. They had recently purchased the impressive looking Key Allegro Marina, referring to it as “John’s retirement project”. Catching a big marlin sounded enticing, but we made ourselves content with kayaks and the marina pool instead.
2022 update - John and Larie sold the marina a few years later. Key Allegro Marina was hit hard by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and is still closed.
Monday morning, the official 2,000 mile journey began, but first, we had to free one of our prisoners.
Driving back north,we first made a quick stop at IAH where Phil boarded a plane bound for Philadelphia. Thankfully, I was allowed to accompany him to the security area where he got stopped by the TSA. My intrepid traveler forgot that he put his favorite Boy Scout folding knife in his carry-on bag. The agents were actually fairly nice about the packed weapon and allowed Phil to toss the sheathed blade back to me. Pete, Henrik, and I were already on the road by the time his plane took off. It was already noon and we wanted to make our next destination by dinner.
You ask, “What if Phil’s plane didn’t take off as scheduled?”
Not sure what would have happened. And,these were the days before many kids had cell phones. We didn’t worry about him. As a brand new Eagle Scout, Phil had already proved well enough he was capable of figuring things out.
Heading east, our first destination—--New Orleans
“New Awlins”, post Katrina eight months. We had no idea what to expect. I just knew that our deluxe room at the Royal Sonesta, located on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter was ridiculously affordable. Of course, we drove into the city limits with our mouths agape. None of us had ever experienced viewing such devastation of any kind.
Katrina’s wrath couldn’t be missed, anywhere. Signs were half blown away, buildings stood half destroyed. Hotel’s windows were blown out, leaving blank holes dotting the whole sides of tall buildings. And then there were the cars—-thousands of obviously water damaged vehicles, all parked under bridges, overpasses, anywhere to get them off the roads. Traffic; however, certainly wasn’t an issue. As we entered New Orleans, it felt eerily quiet. Streets were virtually empty and the closer we got to our hotel, we encountered huge dumpsters filled to the brim with the remnants of people’s once loved possessions.
When we checked into the Royal Sonesta, at least four people greeted us at the counter. The hotel was still lovely, seemingly surviving the brunt of the storm. The staff was super friendly and appeared thrilled to have guests. Easily, we could have believed we were the only ones there except for one lone group.. You couldn't help but notice that something was a bit different with the folks literally sprawled over the lobby furniture. I tried to ignore the messy looking group but one member of my family definitely noticed them.
As soon as we left the hotel front door to start looking around, Henrik said to me, “Boy those people in the lobby sure were rude”. “Why do you say that?”, I inquired as Pete walked across the street to purchase a “Big Ass Beer” to enjoy while strolling.
“Two of them had their muddy boots on the coffee table,” Henrik replied. At his being 12 at the time, I felt rather proud that such a thing seemed distasteful to him.
When I joked with the front desk clerk upon returning that my son felt a tad offended that folks put their boots on the hotel’s lovely coffee table, she laughed. She said that the group Henrik had watched during our check-in process included the main actors and crew from the show Jackass, hugely popular on tv at the time.
Two Jackass stars have ties to West Chester, PA, where I presently volunteer part time. Ryan Dunn died tragically in a car crash outside of West Chester in June, 2011. More recently, West Chester native, Bam Margera, made the news when he “went missing” from a rehab facility in Florida.
Our time in New Orleans was enjoyable, though uncharacteristically quiet. I’ll never forget us three going into Preservation Hall where we sat for quite a while, enjoying the music of a jazz combo. At the break, one of the musicians came over to us and thanked us for coming. He said with such sincerity, “Please tell folks to come back”.
We certainly planned to.
After leaving New Orleans, the road map showed we’d be in Mobile, Alabama around lunch time. It seemed like a good idea to drive downtown for lunch. What we found was a virtual ghost town. I’m not sure we saw twenty people as we strolled around looking for a bite to eat. We stumbled upon Wintzell's Oyster House on Dauphin Street. We seemed to be the only ones dining that day, but the staff expressed their gratitude that we wandered in. Btw- lunch was delicious.
After finishing, we toured Fort Conde. I don’t remember much about the fort but the note in my album written next to the photo taken after our tour reads, “Does anyone live here?” It appeared Katrina had done a number on Mobile as well.
After an overnight stay in LaGrange, Georgia, our drive continued toward our next destination of Atlanta. We had a special reason to visit the Georgia Aquarium, located downtown. My brother Bland, who at the time worked for UPS, was part of the transfer team bringing the world's biggest fish, the Rhincodon typus (commonly referred to as the whale shark), to the aquarium from Taiwan via the massive UPS 747. The aquarium is amazing and I definitely recommend visiting if ever in the Atlanta area.
2022 Note: You can presently watch a short documentary about the whale shark transfer on Youtube.
Needless to say, this stop was worthy of a magnet.
After our aquarium visit, we made the quick drive to Stone Mountain, Georgia, just minutes outside Atlanta. After riding the cable car to the top, we strolled around on expansive rock where the views were amazing. We were sorry Phil wasn’t with us. He would have especially enjoyed these two attractions. I liked Stone Mountain so much, I bought a magnet here as well.
From Stone Mountain, we proceeded on to Columbia, South Carolina to visit my elder brother and his family. It was while staying here, we tried to reach Phil who was staying with his grandparents each night.
Let me rephrase that—--he was “supposed” to stay with his grandparents each night.
Phil answered the phone from Gramps house. He excitedly reported, “I just came back from the ER”.
My heart started thudding. Have I heard correctly? “Phil, what do you mean, you just came from the ER. Is everything ok?”
“I got a fly in my ear”, he said as if this is a common occurrence for anyone.
“Ok, how did you get a fly in your ear?’, I asked, very glad that so far this emergency didn’t sound very serious.
“Gramp dropped me off at the house and when I was coming down the front steps, this fly flew straight into my ear. Both of us tried to get it out but it was stuck. We went to the hospital and the doctor got it out with tweezers”.
I was still trying to picture all of this but decided that it was best not to. Yuck. I couldn’t imagine anything as awful as a flying creature becoming stuck in the ear canal but I felt grateful that it wasn’t a stinging insect. Most certainly the outcome would have been more painful.
After chatting a bit with Pete’s parents and being told that all was under control, we relaxed once again. We visited the Columbia Zoo and discovered Sticky Fingers Barbeque with my brother Beau and his wife Sylvia.
After saying our good-byes after breakfast the next morning, we pushed on. By mid-afternoon, we stopped at Natural Bridge in Lexington, Virginia. It felt good to get a bit of fresh air and move our legs after sitting in the car for so long. We enjoyed the tour taking us to the bridge and also managed a quick hike. Too tired to continue on much further, we stopped overnight in Winchester, Virginia, once again staying at a Hampton Inn. Larie and John were first to tell us about Hampton. Two decades later, I still highly recommend the Hilton owned hotel chain. At a decent rate, you’ll find comfortable rooms, many offer a nice pool/hot tub, and breakfast is usually great.
After a good nights sleep,we arrived home before 11 am. Imagine my surprise to find our fifteen year old son, lounging on the sofa in his bathrobe; feet on the coffee table, surrounded by all sorts of Wawa wrappers. He looked over at me, said “Hi Mom”, before returning his eyes to his show. He looked quite settled in and from the look of it, it appeared this was where he had spent quite a bit of time during the week.
I was right. Turns out, Phil’s grandfather had determined he was plenty old to be on his own for the last three days of spring break week. Phil said he got along just fine. His grandmother fed him dinner each evening before his grandfather drove him home for the rest of the night. I wasn’t surprised that all had turned out well, though we did let Phil know we sure had missed him. I did, however; make a mental note that my father-in-law didn’t always adhere to agreed plans.
We didn’t know it yet, but this was to be our last spring break trip for years that didn’t involve a mission, like finding colleges or visiting my parents in Kentucky. Our boys were really growing up fast making it necessary to adjust how we traveled in the future.
Turns out, a whole new travel world was just opening up.
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