Hop in the jeep and this is the view out the front window. Everyone is going 75 with 15 feet visibility. I had, had enough car issues lately that I just closed my eyes. Don’t tell Roy but I was scared. I hate when you can’t see that tractor trailer who is not doing 75 pop up in front of you and then the idiot behind you decides to pass at 80 mph. I was so happy once the sun came out and we were out of the soup. That was around San Antonio. We got to San Antonio just in time for morning traffic but it wasn’t that bad. We didn’t stop to view the river walk or any of the sites, we kept heading towards Houston, hoping not to hit the afternoon traffic.

We received a call from our friend who was dealing with the Suburban for us and the bad news was a blown head gasket and a new engine was in order. Roy had researched new engines the night before in the hotel, even though he really wanted a new TRUCK but he doesn’t want to pay for a new TRUCK for the next 6 or more years. We are paying on the Jeep still and with me not working, would make it hard to travel with no money. So the discussion on the phone was one of the guys at the shop, had a car guy and the car guy said he would replace the engine for 600 labor and the cost of the engine and supplies. So we had that discussion and I did like I always do in money conversations…”Whatever will make you happiest Baby, is what I think you should do.”  Decision was no new TRUCK :(, new engine in the Suburban :)~.  In a few years after we have been retired and life settles down, he will get his new TRUCK.

We finally get thru Texas and we are in Louisiana, which to me seems like it was named after 2 people and someone misinterpreted it. I bet it was Louis Y Ana. Just something to think about. Wikipedia I bet has another idea of how Louisiana got it’s name. I am sticking with my theory…Why, you ask ? Because, I like it and to me it makes sense.

Ok back to the trip, we are in Louisiana and we go thru Lake Charles and stop in a little town called Iowa. We got in fairly early. So we unload the cats and let them free to roam and run, so hopefully they will sleep during the night. The other reason we hadn’t been getting any sleep.  We decide to see what Iowa had to offer. We were looking for some good Southern food. FYI to this day I still have not had a hush puppy with any meal. So we plug in restaurants in the Garmin and see where it leads. There was one called Rabideaux, so we decide that we would give it a shot. Garmin told us to go down I-10 and we didn’t want to drive miles for food. So, we figured we would find something in town, so we are driving around and I suggest we go down this one street and that street led us to Rabideaux. http://rabideauxs.com

We went in and there is a meat counter, a menu on the wall and tables. Not knowing the system, which is you order like fast food and they call you when it’s ready. NO refills on soda! They do sell beer and ice cream. Roy had a catfish PoBoy that was a whole piece of catfish and huge. I had a baked potato with chicken and the works (my diet was out the window at this point) and it was a huge potato. We also got a side order of onion rings and half dozen “BOUDIN BALLSS” (that’s how it is on the website menu). There was so much food, we couldn’t eat it all. The balls were the size of tennis balls and I swear it was a whole onion in the onion rings. We took some back to the room for later but we never ate it.

We got back to the room and one of the cats (Bogey) is missing. We had made sure we closed the door because it had a tendency not to close tightly when you walked out. Where did that little sucker go. This is just what we needed at this point, Damn Cat. We notice that there is space at the head of the bed where the cat can get under the bed, so Roy lifts it up and I grab the Damn Cat out, while Roy has the bed up I notice that the box spring is broken and the boards are broken underneath. Did we switch beds with the luggage and cat carriers..no we slept on the broken bed.  We slid into the middle of the bed all night. Our backs were so sore and once again no sleep but this time it was all our fault for not thinking about the broken bed before we climbed in to sleep.

Have you ever had a broken bed in a hotel?  How does that happen?  Do hotels not know these beds are broken? Tell me your bad hotel bed stories.

Happy travels,

Kelly