It was 16° F when we got up this morning, the coldest since we left Cohasset. It was a clear night and the cold arctic air hadn't passed on so it was even colder than the night of the ice storm.
But new air was coming and the sun warmed things quickly, so it was above freezing by 9AM. After a couple of hot showers at the Bay Berry RV Park (not a bayberry bush to be seen, only a foot-high palm tree), we started down the road. What a difference, the bridges were clear of ice and the roads dry. We quickly entered Louisiana and noticed that the bridge over the river separating the states had been salted. I guess they did have salt in Louisiana. We trundled west on I-10 and I-12 (over the top of lake Ponchartrain, avoiding New Orleans) and made it into Texas by mid-afternoon.
As we approached Houston, we figured that we would make the city at rush hour and made a navigation mistake. We noticed that there was a ring road around Houston, the Sam Houston Tollway. It only added a few miles to our total and we expected that there would be less traffic than going through the center of the city. We were half right. There was probably somewhat less traffic, except for the backups at each toll plaza and each major exit. It was $3.50 for Speedy and the trailer each time and a total of $14 for about 30 miles...hardly worth it.
It was after dark when we exited onto US 59, heading southwest towards Victoria and Aransas. Our target was the Cracker Barrel in Rosenberg and we reached it at just 7pm. We stopped for dinner, but the restaurant was in a large mall and very public and bright, so we decided to move on and have ended up in the town of Wharton at the local Walmart, surrounded by trucks and a couple of other RVs.
We are only about 100 miles from Aransas, so we expect to make it there tomorrow. We'll probably stop in Port Lavaca for groceries and propane and at the Austwell Post Office to see if our mail has been forwarded. We aren't sure where we'll be staying tomorrow night. Our site isn't supposed to be available until Saturday, so it may be the local city park in Austwell or Goose Island State Park about 30 miles away.
No "official" birds-of-the-day, but we did see some large flocks of white birds in rice fields along I-10 before Houston, which we think were snow geese, but they far away and we were whizzing along.
It is 54° now, a welcome change.
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