And just like that, my Mississippi state vacation is underway. Just like what? Well, like this…

The plan for Day One was to leave home at 4:00 AM for Charlotte Douglas International Airport, then fly to George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. Once in Houston, I was to change planes, then fly to Jackson, Mississippi. I would then rent a car and drive to Red Bluff. After photographing Red Bluff, I would then drive to a hotel in the city of Natchez. That was the plan. Here’s what actually happened…

I left home at 4:00 AM for Charlotte Douglas International Airport, then flew to George H. W. Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas. All good so far. Once inside the terminal, I checked the “Departures” monitor to see which gate I had to get to next. To my shock and awe, next to the gate number there appeared the word, CANCELED. This was a little concerning. I made my way to the listed gate anyway, to ask the gate agent what options they might have for me. As it stood, there was ONE more flight to Jackson today, for which they could give me “priority standby”. And there was an available seat on tomorrow morning’s flight. They gave me both of these, but the gate agent seemed to think it was rather likely that one or both of these flights may end up canceled as well. It occurred to me that I may be able to alter my car rental reservation to start at Houston rather than Jackson, so I asked about retrieving my checked bag at Houston instead of them flying it to Jackson. The gate agent suspected this may take 4 or 5 hours, as the baggage folks were facing serious issues due to a slew of cancelations the previous day.

And so I left the gate and headed for the baggage claim, to get the baggage department’s opinion on the matter. On the way there, I looked at Google Maps and found that a drive from Houston to Natchez would take about six hours. This would require eliminating Red Bluff from my itinerary, but I went ahead and called Enterprise and successfully changed my car rental. Fortunately, the baggage folks didn’t have any trouble retrieving my bag for me, so I had it within just a few minutes. I also had no trouble with the just-changed car rental, so I was on the road less than two hours after landing at Houston. I drove north out of Houston, then east across Louisiana’s, um, ankle. I only made four stops: one for nappin’ and three for caffeine. Well, and maybe about eight more stops to scream at the Google Maps Navigation app.