San Antonio to Lake Charles

Travel Day

• San Antonio to Galveston via I-10 and I-45
• Galveston to Lake Charles via SR 87, SR 124 and I-10

Coming out of San Antonio; the rain got more intense as the day went on.

We managed to see our first palm tree!

The rain was bad enough that this truck crashed into the median. We were stuck in the traffic backup for two hours.

You can't see it, or smell it, but the truck was carrying chemicals. It smelled like Acetone or something like that. The smell was pretty bad.

Rain shrouded Houston, the clouds low enough to hug the tops of the higher buildings.

We headed south, towards the Gulf of Mexico.

I am not sure if this was sea water or flooding from the rain!

Coming up to Galveston Island. That's ocean in the background.

We've made it to the Gulf of Mexico on Galveston Island.

This is the Bishop's Palace in Galveston. It has survived both the terrible hurricane of 1900, the one which pretty much wiped out the whole city, and Hurricane Ike in 2008.

A number of older buildings survived both hurricanes. This one is across the street from The Bishop's Palace.

A bit more detail on the house pictured above.

We took the ferry from Galveston Island to the Bolivar Peninsula, driving east along the shore, then up through the bayou country to I-10 and on to Lake Charles.

Not every building on the shoreline can take the weather. The Gulf storms can be very strong.

Those storms are why they build so high, so that the flooding doesn't ruin anything important.