Houston Road Trip 2014 – back home

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2,440 miles later and we’re back home with our latest family vacation road trip in the books.

We got an early start on Sunday morning, checking out of our hotel and starting our long drive east on I-10 back to the in-laws’ in north Florida. Since it was the end of the holiday weekend we were expecting heavy traffic again, but this time luck was with us and all the backups we saw were on the other side of the highway, going west. We made it through Baton Rouge and all the way to New Orleans (playing Rubberneckers) without incident (not even rain).

Rather than go back through NOLA again, we decided to take a slight out-of-the-way detour and drive north over the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway to I-12. Before getting on the causeway we stopped at a Cafe Du Monde in Metairie for “lunch” (beignets and coffee can be lunch, right? 😉 ). Then we were driving across the longest bridge over water in the world (23 miles!). It’s pretty crazy driving on a bridge where you actually lose sight of land for a significant amount of time.

North of Lake Pontchartrain, I-12 took us east back to our route home on I-10. We saw more traffic around Mobile, but again it was all on the other side of the freeway. A few hours later we were back in Florida, reunited with the in-laws and our dog.

Mid-Monday morning we re-packed the truck, bid goodbye to the family, and (finally) headed home. Shortly after dinnertime we were back in the Tampa/St. Pete area and glad to be done with driving for a while. Luckily, I still have one day of vacation left to just relax at  home before heading back to work on Wednesday.

Our roadside attractions on the drive home from Texas:

Technology summary: I’ve already mentioned our use of the Roadside America and Food TV apps (to find the quirky stops and cool restaurants along our way), but we also relied heavily on Waze and iExit. My trusty Garmin nüvi was also constant companion on the dashboard while we were in the car driving. The New York Times Crossword app on my wife’s iPad was a good distraction during the longer driving legs (but those puzzles can be hard!).

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