Day 2 Gonzalez LA to Baytown TX

Sunday June 11th

I forgot to mention in my last post that at packet pickup yesterday morning we ran into our new friends from Fort Worth that stopped to help us on Friday.  They seemed genuinely happy to see us and that we made it.

We were up by 6:30 this morning.  The run from Gonzalez to Baytown is the longest one of the tour this year.  We had breakfast at the hotel and were on the road by 7:45.  Our first stop was in Lafayette LA around 9 AM, this is where the route got off of I 10 and got onto some smaller state highways. 

We pulled out of the station and went down a couple blocks to make the turn and we heard an air leak sound so we pulled into a parking lot, it wasn't it a really great area of town.  A young man and his Dad from Iowa stopped to help us and ended up leaving one of their jack stands with us.  We need to catch up with them and return it. 

We don't know who took this picture of us in the parking lot but it showed up on Facebook. It looks like I am mad but I wasn't.

Anyway, David pulled off the right rear tire and found out that the bracket for the air bag was broken and had punctured the air bag.  He was able to pull off the broken bracket and air bag.  We were able to get back on the road around 10.  We decided that it would be best to not follow the route the rest of the way so we went back to I 10 and took it all the way to Baytown.  No air bag = a VERY rough ride!

We decided that we may need to rename this adventure the "Hard Luck Tour".  I told David that his mistress (AKA the car) is being too needy and a needy mistress is not a good thing.  LOL

Let me tell you something about roads in LA.  #1 most of them are not real smooth, #2 a lot of them are not really roads but just really long bridges.  We went over a stretch of road that was at least 25 to 30 miles of nothing but a bridge.  The bridge was so long that it had high bridges on it to go over ship channels and rivers.  Now, bridges are not my thing, especially high ones and when we had to travel on a bridge that had more bridges, let me tell you, I didn't like it!! 

We finally crossed back into Texas around 11:30, I was not sad to have Louisiana in the rear view.  Surely, Texas will be much kinder to us!

We made a brief pit stop in Beaumont Tx and were looking for someplace to grab a quick lunch.  We didn't really seem anything around but saw a Beaumont PD so we asked him.  He recommended a little store about 5 miles down the road that makes excellent BBQ sandwiches.  It is between Beaumont and Winnie TX, called Bar-H BBQ.  Boy was he right!!  I had a turkey sandwich and David had pork.  They were both huge and fantastic.  It really pays to ask the locals where to go.

We made it to the venue, Royal Purple Raceway but I didn't pay attention to the time.  We had driven through a few rain showers on the way, nothing bad but the skies looked like it was going to get worse.  We rushed over and checked in and went to the Air Ride booth to talk to them about the air bag problem.  They just so happened to have one (and only one) of the air bags that we needed.  The guy there told us to go over to the Mobile Medics and see if they could weld the broken bracket. 

David's cousin, Dawn that lives in the Houston area drove over and hung out with us for a while.   Thank you Dawn, it was great to see you!!!

Thankfully, they were able to weld the bracket.  We had to wait our turn so it took awhile but they got it done and David was able to start putting it all back together.  While he was working on it the sky was getting darker and darker and it started to sprinkle and then rain.  By the time he was finishing up it was raining really hard and the lightening was getting pretty close also.  We once again got soaked trying to finish up and put everything away. 

We headed out to find our hotel in the pouring rain.  Thankfully, it was only about 4 miles to the Holiday Inn Express.  This is a nice newish hotel, no complaints.  After checking in and getting dried off and cleaned up we asked at the front desk for suggestions on places to go for dinner.  The girl gave several suggestions.  We decided Mexican food sounded good and set off for El Toro, just a few blocks up the road.  The food and service were both well above average, we were very pleased and very full even though we shared an entrée. 

 

We plan on leaving a little later in the morning since we have to go all the way around Houston and don't want to do that at 8 AM on Monday.  Looking forward to a much less eventful day tomorrow as we travel to Austin.