Saturday was supposed to be a relaxing, stress free day full of laundry and packing. I had done so much prior to that week, it really shouldn't have been bad. Our plan was to pack it all up, load the car, eat an early dinner and head out to our $8.88 room at the Grapevine Super 8 hotel. We'd swim a bit and turn in around 8:30pm so we'd be fresh and ready for our 7:15 am flight to Orlando.
Not.
Hurricane Ike was barrelling towards us and beating a path similar to Rita's back in 2005. This was not making anyone happy and adding a ton of stress on the family. Suddenly, we had to change our focus to stowing away Tonka trucks and lawn donkeys. (Yes, I have lawn donkeys, and the last thing we needed was a flying ass through a window.) We needed to fill the water bottles, check flashlight batteries, and start the generator so it could run for a bit. To make matters a little more stressful, I worked until almost midnight on Friday.
Luckily, we ended up on the better side of the storm. This was much clearer on Friday morning, so we just had to worry about potential flooding, general stormy weather, and some heavy wind gusts. So Friday night, we watched some Ike TV and powered down the computer for safety's sake. Sadly, I did not print my last minute to do list before we shut it all down. I would pay for that later.
I slept poorly as the wind began to pick up and worry overtook me. I slept about 5 hours, getting up at least three times during the night. When the sun came up, I hauled myself out of bed and began to try and wrap things up. By the time the eye wall was about fifty miles to our East, I was in full throws of packing. Then we heard a giant crack and the house literally shook.
This sent Hoot into a tizzy. We ran to the front window and saw the neighbors across the street come running out of their houses. Within a minute, there was a firetruck out front and firemen swarming across the neighbors back yards. They had lost a huge tree that took down a transformer and left live power lines sizzling around the rooftops and yards. Soon, power was cut on that side of the street and the power company was on scene. Really, I was very impressed by the quick reaction time. I felt very blessed that we still had power and no one was hurt.
I kept packing with one eye on the suitcases and one on the TV. The bands of wind and rain continued to sweep across the area, but the eye of the hurricane never crept any closer. It was hard to keep on task, and I wasn't nearly as organized as I usually am. Eventually, I just declared the packing was done and over. I knew I would be forgetting things, but I didn't really care. Now we just needed to get out.
We loaded the car and carefully tracked Ike on the radar. Eventually, we headed almost due West until we hit I-35. This added quite a bit of mileage to the trip, but feeling like we were on our way really helped to improve everyone's mood. We pulled into our hotel at almost 9pm, and were all keyed up. It took forever for poor Hoot to unwind. He really had picked up a lot of stress from us and the situation. I thought he'd never go to sleep. All I wanted to do was sleep!
Coming up next- Day Two: Planes, trains, and where did I just park my automobile?
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