This isn’t necessarily topical any more, but I finally got around to getting the pictures out of the camera that I took evacuating from Rita. I took a whopping total of three during various traffic jams. In the first two pictures, it’s between 4:30 and 5am, on Highway 90, near Liberty or Dayton– I forget which. Since I was driving alone (my mother and brother were in the truck you see in front of me), I had to snap the photos while driving. Or rather, sitting. There were better things to shoot at times, but generally I was moving at the time and chose not to try snapping pics in stop-n-go traffic.

Pictures below the fold. (note: if they’re not there, check back shortly. It’s my first time posting pics here, and I don’t want another screwup like last time.)

You don’t see why the cage is in his truck, but there is a VERY large dog in there. We generally didn’t have to worry about someone trying to steal anything out of the back of the truck. 🙂

So…. about four hours later (maybe a bit less, per the shadows) we hadn’t gotten that far. This is some minor side road leading up to 190 just west of the reservation. It was another hour or more in this line; shortly after we got on 190, we had to go around a roadblock to keep from being diverted to Lufkin. You don’t see the truck because I’m in the lead at this point. My brilliant decision to avoid the traffic going up 69 ran us into this.

Guys, you want to know what the best evac plan is? Just keep order at the intersections and gas stations, and we’ll find our own route.

Tomorrow or Friday, I’ll be back with Part II, and some pictures of damage I snapped while driving to Mark’s funeral.