Checking in from...

...Birmingham. Yes, we are officially now hurricane evacuees!

This will be short, as we're all exhausted after a long day. We decided around 5:00 to leave Louisiana and drive home, as the traffic going out of town wasn't getting any better and the governor had decided to push contraflow back to 4 AM rather than the originally planned 6 AM. We weren't entirely sure we could make it back from Baton Rouge to the New Orleans airport, as part of the route involved using a section of I-10 that would be reversed, and even if we could make it back there were no guarantees of getting into the airport at all, never mind actually catching a flight out (and if we couldn't do so, we would be stuck at the airport with nowhere to go, as everywhere around New Orleans has ordered mandatory evacuations and curfews to go along with them).

So we decided to just say the heck with it and get a head start on driving home -- us and a heck of a lot of other people. When we got to Hattiesburg, Miss., we heard this press conference live on the radio and immediately decided that we made the right decision. (I can only imagine what it will be like tomorrow after people have been preparing to leave all night.) Traffic has been consistently heavy all the way to Birmingham, and the hotel that we're staying at has signs on the door saying that they are already completely booked through Wednesday. In other words, we got out at the right time.

We'll check in again tomorrow from home (hopefully), and while I don't have time to get into specifics right now (Laura will do it later), you should always rent cars from Hertz.