As the sun peeked over the horizon, we headed out of Mobile, first stopping at Starbucks, then topping off the tank, so we could make the 75-mile transit of Gulf Coast Mississippi without stopping.  After the “Yankee Go Home” episode back in 1979, we make a point not to set foot in Mississippi.  Seems the Unix Curmudgeon has a long history of having people confuse “troubleshooter” with “troublemaker,” probably because of his habit of kicking people’s trash cans down the stairwell to get their attention.

Anyway, we soon arrived in Louisiana, but it was closed.  The visitor’s center, that is.  But, it opened shortly and we got an updated map and guide for our short stay.  We searched unsuccessfully for beignets in Covington (once again, the maps in the GPS proved to represent a slightly-altered parallel universe) but did stop in Baton Rouge for Cafe au Laits.

Then, on to Texas, facing all 880 miles of I-10 ahead of us to the New Mexico border.  We discovered everything is big in Texas, especially the price of motel rooms.  We experienced afternoon rush hour through Houston, in a steady parade of traffic that thinned little into the dark, reaching Sequin well after dark, for the night, 625 miles today.

After we left the Cape on Wednesday, we meandered through the backroads to Orlando, trying to avoid toll roads.  The Google Maps bicycle route (we were in the car) insisted on taking us through the Cocoa watershed, which, of course, was gated and locked.  So, we angled south through the “lakes” on the GPS, most of which turned out to be sloughs and swamps.

Despite our efforts, after wandering through endless neighborhoods, we found ourselves confronted with a toll booth, which extracted $1.75 from us to use a chunk of freeway for about a mile before we turned off and drove several more miles through neighborhoods to our niece’s house. There didn’t seem to be an alternative.  Our niece in Orlando and her husband both work for The Mouse, on busy schedules, so we more or less got to visit with them separately.

On Thursday morning, we explored a few more neighborhoods, got gas, made an appointment for an oil change (5000 miles since leaving home), and resigned ourselves to the tollroad, reaching the Jeep dealer in Lake City at lunch time.  We ate our brown bag lunch in the waiting area while the car was on the lift, then got on I-10 and headed west toward its terminus in Los Angeles.

We crossed over the Florida-Alabama line at sunset, relieved to be out of Florida after two weeks of unrelenting heat.  This was the Nice Person’s first visit to Alabama.  It was the Curmudgeon’s third visit: the first consisted of a quick drive from the Mobile airport into Mississippi, where he was easily exposed as a Yankee and run out of town.  The second was a quick transit without stopping. We spent the night in Mobile, and will steel ourselves for the short dash across Mississippi in early morning, hoping to make central Texas by day’s end.