Hurricane Rita Evacuation

Thanks to the public mockery of the Katrina victims for not heeding evacuation warnings, the entire metropolis of Houston—and the Gillett caravan--left as Rita neared Thursday morning. We packed the car with keepsakes such as pictures and letters, our “documents”, and ourselves. Amie wouldn’t let me leave the dog—just kidding, I never asked…with full intent.

We spent Wednesday evening, after feeding the missionaries all the food from our freezer, preparing our house for wind damage: we cleaned everything out of the yard, took all hanging pictures down, moved all the lamps and other “missile-istic” items to a closet, and threw out all rot-able food from the fridge and freezer that the missionaries didn’t eat. I then tried to push the furniture to an interior room of the house, but gave up because we don’t have an interior room larger than a coat closet. We finished at 1am.

Shane’s and my family left at 4am (only an hour later than we had planned) for family friends in Dallas. I-10 was already a mess of stationary vehicles, so we took the “back roads.” Using GPS and creativity we made it to Dallas in only about 6 hours- a mere 2 hours longer than had we used the freeways under normal conditions. We pitied the others who were stuck on the freeways; the news was reporting that it was taking them upwards of 24 hours to make the same journey. The horrific traffic jams and decimated gasoline supply caused many to return.
Thanks to Rita turning northward earlier than forecasted, we ended up taking a 4-day vacation with our most prized possessions and the family pets. Wish we had taken more pictures!