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We did not take any major vacations for
four straight years. Then, in the spring of '96 I felt an urgent need to get in touch with my
roots. We scheduled a trip to Texas three months in advance. The destination was Houston and
the time was late July. The Olympics had just started and the country was in a frenzy. It was
one last trip for the Buick and I did most of the driving.
It took us two full days to get to Houston. It was extra hot
because the car had no A/C. We were headed for Lamar's house and got lost. We had to stop and
ask for directions in a bad part of town. We were almost mugged! We finally arrived at the
Caldwells around nine that night.
The next day Lamar took us to NASA and showed us around. We saw
the space shuttle that went to the moon. That evening we went to a baseball game. The Astros
were playing the Padres. San Diego won 7-4 in the Astrodome.
The next day Mary drove us downtown to where she works. Most of
the cities are connected by an underground tunnel and we walked through it. We also rode a
trolley. Late that afternoon we said our goodbyes and mom and I headed for Galveston.
After finding a motel, we played mini-golf that night and awoke
the next morning ready for adventure. We spent some time at the library while mom did some
research work. Afterwards, we spent the afternoon walking on the beach and went to some nature
museum. There we saw an IMAX movie while wearing 3-D glasses. That evening, we got on a ferry
that took us across Galveston Bay to Port Arthur. From there we drove to Beaumont and spent
the night.
The next morning we headed east in the rain to Louisiana. About
5 miles from Lake Charles I put on the brakes and lost control of the car. We rammed into a
muddy ditch off the interstate. A nice guy came along shortly afterwards and pulled us out
with his big truck.
We proceeded to drive very slowly in heavy rain most of the way
to New Orleans. Much to our dismay, we couldn't find a single motel there so we had to scratch
our plans. We concluded a stressful day by spending the night in a cheap motel in Mississippi.
We spent our last day in Memphis. A riverboat cruise on old man river was relaxing, and a stroll down world famous Beal Street was a good tonic. We finally capped off the trip with a fun-filled visit to the zoo.
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