We left Houston last Thurday morning at about 8:00am. Since everyone was going North and West I decided to take my family South to my parents house. As Rita seemed to be moving more Northwest I figure it was a better route. The normal trip from Houston to South Texas is about 5 to 6 hours. It took us 16 hours to make the trip. My step Daught and son went with their Dad to Austin and it took them 28 hours.

The main problem I found with the evacuation routes was all the exits were blocked, BUT the entrance ramps were open. So as time went on you constantly had more people joining the route causing the people who were already in the mix not to move. I can understand the need to keep people moving in one direction, but to not allow them to exit as needed that was THE major problem that caused all the backups. Over the past few days I noticed the return to home travel was not the same as the evacuation travel. I feel that was because all the exits were open and so people were able to get on and get off as needed. Providing for forward movement.

Sadly, I think next time around a lot of people will decided to stay and not evacuate after having set in their cars for hours. The night before I left I ran into a gentleman at HEB who evacuated New Orleans during Katrina and spent 19 hours on the road. He said this time around he was just going to stay at his new house.

It's good to be back home and I'm glad we dodged what could have been a great disaster.

JR Gautreaux