Tuesday: 926 miles

Tuesday started off a little rocky. We woke up again at 4:45 in preparation to leave at 5am. I don't think I will ever be able to get used to waking up that early! We checked out of the hotel and walked outside into immediate downpour. This wasn't good; it was thunderstorming. All we could do was hope the rain wouldn't get too bad and that we wouldn't lose too much time driving slow with the rain, as it was supposed to be another 14 hour day of driving as it was. Unfortunately, the rain persisted and we had to drive much slower. Visibility was low because the rain was so heavy and it
was so dark. It cleared up after about an hour and a half, and at that point we had technically gained an hour since we crossed a time zone! That would play in our favor for sure. The rain probably extended our travel time by about a half hour which wasn't too bad. The rest of the drive was fairly clear, I cut out another four-hour leg after breakfast which brought us to 1:30 where we finally stopped for gas in Louisiana.
This time, I was sure to watch out for the state signs as we passed them and capture pictures. We left Tennessee and drove through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana (I was hoping to go through New Orleans but our route went around it) before we finally crossed a bridge into Texas!
As I write this, we are on the final 45 minutes of the trip, making our way on I-10 to our hotel!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Night in Houston

Image
Once we made it to Houston we found our hotel and settled in. I was lucky to be able to meet up with my friend from the New York Times summer program while I was here. She picked me up and brought me out to dinner at Ninfa's on Navigation where I was able to try some authenitc Tex-Mex cuisine! If you ever find yourself in Houston, make sure you get in a meal at Ninfa's. The mole gelato, amazing!
Read more

From Boston to Houston: 1,800 miles for Hurricane Harvey Relief

Image
Hello! My name is Stella Eliopoulos. This past summer, I was able to spend a couple weeks in the heart of Manhattan with the Summer Academy of the School of the New York Times. I was accepted into the Food Culture intensive program, taught by the established Gwen Hyman, a James Beard Award nominee and wife of award-winning chef Andrew Carmellini. I met students from all over. My best friend from the class was from Houston. The program ended but I continued to keep in touch with my circle of friends. We’d talk about how much we missed the city and each other, and how much we’d prefer to be back in Manhattan rather than facing the upcoming school year. Around the time school started again, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston. I saw daily news updates and images online, but I wasn’t able to recognize the extent of the hurricane until my friend from Houston began to mention its impact, talking about how she was out of school for a couple weeks and sending pictures of the flood damage at her fr...
Read more

Making the Donation

Image
As I reflect on the time I spent in Houston, with Lady Taylor, and the volunteers, I continue to realize how amazing this opportunity and this experience really was. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting since I had no prior knowledge to where we were going or what the area looked like, but everything was so new for me. We drove through the community where the church was and it was shocking to see how the effects of the hurricane and its devastation were still persisting in the community, which looked socioeconomically to have been fairly weak to begin with. This further struck my chords of compassion and reminded me why I did this project and why it had really been so important for me to travel to Houston and personally see my project to the end.  When we pulled up to the church, we weren't even sure if we had the right place. There was nobody else around, which made us wary as we were in a totally new community that was very far from home. We had no clue what to expe...
Read more