Planning our departure

Our time here in Baton Rouge is winding down. We are committed to be in Death Valley by the 24th, and we are giving ourselves nine days for travel, so we have announced our departure on the 14th, just ten days from now. While the relief effort here is also winding down, it will definitely not be over by then, so we are spending the next few days training the folks who still have open-ended deployment dates. Most of those people have applied for "reserve" status with the Red Cross, which means they will start being paid for their efforts and are then committed to staying a full three months.

Tomorrow we will send two teams out to Lake Charles to set up equipment there for a continued presence as Cameron Parish reopens to residents. The Red Cross may be running a feeding operation there until there are enough services operating for the residents to feed themselves.

Today is our penultimate day off, and we are going to try to make a daylight visit to New Orleans after we dump and fill our tanks. I expect next Sunday will be spent preparing Odyssey for our departure.

Our current plan is to head out next Wednesday afternoon, cross the Mississippi on I-10 and head straight to Beaumont, Texas. From there we will continue on I-10 to Houston, then US290 through Austin and back to 10 south of Junction. We will most likely stay on 10 through El Paso, Las Cruces, Tucson, and Phoenix, where we will pick up US-93 north to Kingman, over Hoover Dam, and into Las Vegas. From there it is a day's drive through Pahrump and into the park.

In order to maximize our time here in Baton Rouge, our travel plan is necessarily very direct and we expect to travel "straight through," so to speak. This route does take us past a number of friends and family, and we do intend to spend at least an evening with each as we blast through.

After we leave here, I expect our lives to return to a more relaxed pace, and I will have more time both to post here and to catch up with email. You might say we are looking forward to getting on the road because we need the rest...