Wherever we may roam: Traveling to Alabama

Well, we drove from Texas to Alabama in two days. The traffic in Houston is so bad... I spent hours white-knuckled in stop-n-go traffic. When the girls asked to stop for a break to stretch, I was glad to take a break from the traffic. We pulled over about 50 meters from the ocean, and there the girls found some shells to entertain them for a few minutes. We grabbed dinner at Ihop and got back on the road. We had barely crossed the border into Louisiana when we decided to get a room for the night. The next day we decided to stop in Gulfport, MS to stretch our legs and check out the Gulf coast for the first time in our lives. The waves were nice and gentle. Of course the girls loved it and I thought it was pretty nice myself. We spent about 45 minutes on the beach and got back on the road and got to Alabama around 9:30 at night. The hotel my mother-in-law booked for us did not have internet access. Since I only had that night to talk to my husband before he was gone on a training exercise for a week, I asked her if she would mind if I switched hotels to one that had internet access. I felt so bad having to ask that of my MIL since she had gone through so much trouble to find us a place close to her house. So we ended up staying at a Holiday Inn up the road and were even given a room upgrade... the manager on duty wanted to bless us by giving us a larger room on the 1st floor so I wasn't leaving my kids several times to go unload the car and drag things to the second floor. Just so you know, the military discount in Alabama is also higher than the AAA discount. Not a bad thing for those of us in the military. But because the cost of the room was a bit higher at the H.I., we only stayed there for one night.