Houston

Greetings from downtown Houston!

Well, this probably won't be the favorite travel day of our trip.  We woke up to a flat tire on the truck.  Ralph was able to patch it but called AAA to switch the spare with the patched tire.  The AAA guy (super helpful) came out and looked at the tire and suggested a tire repair place close by who could give us a heavy patch on the tire so we wouldn't have to use the spare.  While waiting for AAA, a propane truck drove by and we were able to get our tanks filled which worked out great because we needed to do that.  Once we were at the tire repair place, it took only 15 minutes and cost only $10 (!).  We lost about two hours, heading out at 10:00 AM. 

We went through a border control crossing about 100 miles north of the border.  They had a drug sniffing dog who was checking out the vehicles in front of us.  They didn't have the dog check our trailer.  Guess we didn't match the profile of drug smugglers😊.

We are listening to "Count of Monte Cristo" while traveling, one of my favorite books of all time.  The audio is 52 hours so we will be entertained for most, if not all, of the rest of our trip.  

We made great time until we were about eight miles from our destination and then it took about three hours to get the rest of the way.  Okay, that is an exaggeration, but it did take at least an hour.  Stop and go traffic (mostly stop), most of the way.  We knew we would be coming in at rush hour but thought that most people would be going out of the city instead of into it.  Didn't count on the accident that blocked much of the freeway.

Here is our truck up on jacks, waiting for the front tire to get repaired.  

Houston skyline taken from the car.  This was taken while we were sitting in traffic.  Our stay in Houston will be the last of our seven nights in Texas as we will be in New Orleans tomorrow.

Tonight is a stay at Harvest Host.  It is at a brewery in downtown Houston.  We were originally a little concerned about staying downtown but the reviews were very good and the facility next door in the picture has 24/7 security.  We did notice the razor wire on top of the fence.  It is much less humid here and we are really appreciating it.