Houston

There's a lot to tell about my travels today! But I am EXHAUSTED, so I'll edit this after I get more sleep.

Take care, my friends.

Edit:
Okay! Sorry about that, I just really needed some sleep after driving for ten hours and being awake for twenty-four hours. (Plus, before last night, I'd only gotten a total of about six hours of sleep over the last four or five days.

So, I drove us from El Paso Texas to Comfort Texas, while my significant other, B, slept in the passenger seat.

I'm a short guy, only standing at about five foot, one inch tall. It's hard for me to see out of a lot of sedans. The Ford Fusion we're renting is a large sedan, and it was tricky finding the right position to be able to see out of it as best as I can. (I have a little trouble with directional markings on pavement at night, because I can't fully see them, but on the highway I had no issues at all.) I'm so thankful that on many full-sized sedans, it's becoming standard to be able to adjust at least the driver's seat upward, not just forward.

When I started driving the Fusion, I thought it was okay, but not the kind of car I would personally own because of the sight issues. However, after driving that Fusion for ten hours straight, through pitch darkness and INTO a sunrise, with the sun directly shining in my very photophobic eyes (there's only so much that polarized prescription sunglasses can do) for two or three of those ten hours, I can safely say that if I had the opportunity to buy a new car, the Ford Fusion is definitely one I'd think about getting.

I don't really like sedans that much, either. I'm a hatchback/minivan kinda guy myself. Purely because they're great for traveling (especially with cats) and when I'm in my hometown, I have enough friends that crowding into a sedan isn't all that comfortable, and a minivan is perfect for transporting a group of friends.

But damn. That Fusion, let me tell you. (Sorry, I love cars. Now, onto the rest of our adventures.)

On our way out of El Paso, we passed by a very serious accident on the road that takes you to the highway on our part of town. I was unable to get a good look at it, and definitely unable to get a picture of it, as I was driving.

Then, passing through Fabens (also in El Paso County, as El Paso is both the name of the city I live in and the county in which that city resides) I saw some flashing lights on the side of the highway. Because of how the road winds, I couldn't tell which direction they were on, but just in case, I moved over to the left in case they were in the eastbound lanes. I'm very glad I did, because when the semi I was a bit behind got up to the flashing lights, they turned their hazards on to warn me that it was more than just someone being pulled over.

As I got up to it, I saw no less than ten Border Patrol vehicles on the side of the highway, with Border Patrol agents and dogs heading south towards the border on foot, in the desert.

Aside from that, and getting trapped behind a semi-truck with a driver falling asleep behind the wheel and taking up both lanes, making it impossible to pass him, my drive was fairly uneventful.

After B took over driving, while going through Houston, every lane of I-10 (the highway we're taking, since it goes from coast to coast and runs through El Paso and also the place we're going to) was shut down because of a major accident. Six lanes of traffic had to force their way into a single-lane exit, some cars being forced to drive the wrong direction on the highway to turn around to get to the exit.

Not much of the highway was shut down, and everyone was able to get back on the highway at the next on-ramp. But we were trapped in a traffic jam for about an hour.

I've not been able to find any reported news of the accident we passed in El Paso (which is very unusual), nor have I been able to find anything about the border patrol thing in Fabens, and the news in Houston never even mentioned the car accident on I-10, which is super unusual because they should've reported on the road closure. After much online hunting, I've still found nothing about the accident in Houston.

So now, we're in our hotel room in Winnie, outside of Houston. We'll be heading out again in a few hours. I'll be starting off our drive again so B can sleep even more in the car. There's a loud roaring sound we keep hearing, so I looked it up and discovered we're only twenty minutes away from the ocean. I've only seen the ocean once, in Maryland, and when I was there we stayed in a hotel on the beach, and what I'm hearing here sounds a great deal like the ocean sounded in Maryland from inside the hotel room.

I wasn't aware that sound could carry so well.

There were a lot of pictures from our journey today, but this is the one I chose since it actually shows Houston. Some of the other pictures are of Nova in his car seat, and then some of all three cats passed out on the bed in the hotel room.