Thanksgiving Trip 2013 Part Three - Going Home

Saturday, 30 November
We started our journey back to South Carolina a little later that we had planned, getting on the road around 1pm. Because of our experience with traffic in Austin on the trip into San Antonio, we decided to take a more "back road" route going home just to check out an alternate.

Only about the first 1/3 of the trip was on mostly 4-lane roads. The rest was on two-lane roads like I used to travel on as a kid. Still, the speed limit on the 4-lanes was usually 75mph and on the 2-lane 70mph.

It was interesting watching the landscape. The first part of the trip the land was rolling hills and scrub oak with lots of ranches. Some ranches had grand sized houses (in the likeness of South Fork on the TV show Dallas) but most were fairly modest homes - in many cases the work facilities out back were larger indicating a real working ranch. And you would see a pretty nice ranch on one side of the highway with a run-down trailer on the other side. After crossing I-45 the hills became more pronounced and the scrub oak landscape started to give way to "real" trees and woodland.

TX21, about 3:30pm, Bryan Texas
I used to live here back in...

• Rewind nearly to the beginning of the tape << 1958-59 Bryan Texas

Other than remembering a drive-in theater on the road to our house, I have no idea where we lived.

Christmas 1958

The drive-in is long gone so that doesn't help. I do remember Christmas time, dad had a reel-to-reel tape recorder and he had Christmas music recorded on it. And one album he had was a Bing Crosby record with White Christmas, Silent Night, Christmas in Killarney, Mele Kalikimaka on it. Here we are in 2013, and JoAnne and I are listening to the same "record" on the iPod in the car. Jessi could not find her copy of it earlier this week so I uploaded to the Skydrive so she could get it. I am sure my dad just put a microphone in front of a record player to get his recording of it back in the day.  In the picture, I would have been almost 5, and Mike would have been 3 1/2 years old. Notice his red vehicle and compare to JT vehicle in my previous blog. Some things may change, but some traditions live on.

It was about 4pm when we got to Madisonville, Texas. We were getting hungry and figured there would be someplace to eat when we crossed the interstate. +Joanne Turek said she would like some Tex-Mex food since she didn't get her fix in San Antonio. We saw this place and decided to try it out. It was actually pretty good. We would stop there again if opportunity permitted.

Los Ranchos restaurant, Madisonville, Texas

Monroe-Crook House

We passed through the town of Crockett, named after the famed Davy Crockett who died at the Alamo. It was apparently a very prosperous timber area at the turn of the 20th Century and had lots of large Victorian houses in it, like the Monroe-Crook house.It was after dark when we went through Crockett and we were tired so we just blasted on through.

Finally got to Monroe, Louisiana around 9pm and checked into the Comfort Suites for the night.








Sunday, 1 December

JoAnne at Civil War battery at Vicksburg Welcome Center

We got up and had breakfast at the hotel before getting on the road about 7am. Now on I-20, I could see old US80 paralleling us which would have been the road we would have used going from Montgomery, Alabama to Portland, Oregon in 1960. Sorry. No flashback this time. You could see how the old road ran right next to the railroad tracks most of the way.

Old Vicksburg Mississippi river bridge.
Note old US80 sharing the bridge with railroad.
New I-20 bridge is in the background.

About 8am, we stopped at the welcome center in Vicksburg, MS. Vicksburg was the site of an important siege during the Civil War. The city fell to General Grant on July 4, 1863, the day after Lee's defeat at Gettysburg. The fall of Vicksburg gave the Union full control of the Mississippi River.

We continued our drive, stopping at Tuscaloosa for gas, and in Georgia at an Arby's for lupper.







One more flashback:

Panama, 1986

About 5:00pm, I-20 eastbound between Aiken and Augusta
after dark
Seems strange and familiar to be on this road. Seems like we used to drive on it a lot in the past, and now I remember why.

• Rewind<< 1984-87

When we were stationed in Panama, we used to catch Space Available flights back to the States. Many of these would land at Charleston AFB/Charleston IAP. We would rent a car and drive up I-26 to I-95 then get on US78 to Aiken, SC. There we would travel on I-20 through Augusta until we got off on US78 to go to Athens. At least once JoAnne and I had to drive back to Charleston just to get our names on the Space A list to go home.

We went down I-20 from Atlanta to Columbia because the traffic on I-85 looked really bad. Only added about 7 minutes to the trip according to Google maps. We got back home to some cats who were mostly glad to see us. (Demon threw one of his little hissy fits by hiding under the bed until we went to bed. Then he wanted to be rubbed.) We picked up two very happy-to-see-us dogs the next day after work.

Now it is back to work. Can't wait for the next adventure in about 3 weeks.