Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We wrapped up our time at Great Wolf Lodge and head to head almost straight back down to where we started our loop through the ‘blob in the middle states’. The kids were booked into Houston Space Center for a day camp on Mars exploration on Saturday. We had a day and a half to travel 800 miles and also cross Oklahoma off our list of states, so we collected the dog and set off.

Now, normally we like to make sure we have over a half a tank of gas before we set out in the morning. Otherwise, we find we have to stop too soon after just getting going. For some reason, this time, we didn’t have that magic half tank. We were late leaving the resort though so we figured we would drive for 1-2 hours, grab some lunch and gas, and everything would work out just fine. What we did not realise, was that once we left Kansas City, there would be almost literally nothing available.

So with the warning light flashing letting us know we had less than 35km worth of fuel left, we were left frantically searching for the nearest gas station. It was 33km away. And it was the only option for many miles. You can imagine our surprise when we finally came over the hill with the little red marker on the map indicating that we had found our service station and the fuel gauge having given up counting down how many kms left we could drive to find this:

There was one pump in the middle of a field that, thankfully, had a sign letting us know it was open to the public. It would however not accept our credit card, and very clearly did not accept cash. Just as I was about to head across the street to see if someone would accept cash for letting us use their credit card we found out that if you have a Canadian card, when you’re prompted for your ZIP code when paying, you can use the numbers from your postal code and then add two zeros. Crisis averted, tank filled, adventure resumed.

The rest of the drive was uneventful. We eventually made it just north of the Texas border for the night, everyone was pretty well spent by this point and we tucked in for the night. The highlight of the second day of driving was discovering Buc’ees. I don’t even know how to describe just how big of a gas station/food stop/super market this is. There were 64 different pumps for gas, a jerky bar where you can order by the pound, a bakery, a bbq with brisket and pulled pork and about 732 different types of pop lining the walls. I guess everything really is bigger in Texas.

Late the following night we found our AirBnB just outside of Houston. It was described as being in a camping and boating park. Turns out, we were really just staying in a trailer park. Thankfully we couldn’t really see as it was dark by the time we arrived, but it’s safe to say this won’t be our favourite location.

The kids spent our first day in Houston at space camp. I dropped them off first thing in the morning and then Jacob and I headed to Galveston for the day. We were still feeling the effects of this stupid polar vortex, so it was definitely not the most enjoyable temperatures for wandering around a coastal city, but we made the best of it.