Wow! It is so nice to have so many wonderful people caring for us! In our “no room at the inn” entry, we were trying to keep a humorous outlook on a situation that had some desperate fringes to it. So many of you have responded with suggestions, schemes or offers that once again we feel incredibly blessed. We do believe we have a solution. But first, let us share ….
Almost as soon as we posted the message, Mike and Fawn Read, who live in Sugar Land, offered their spare bedroom, noting “we’ve been PROMISED that we’ll have power by Monday.” The Read home is about 20 miles down the Southwest Freeway from the Medical Center.
I called the patient travel services at MD Anderson, and the folks there gave me a couple of suggestions, one of which was to “keep checking” (more later) on line and with hotels directly.
Saturday I got two e-mails and then a phone call from cousin Chris Trusty in Honolulu, where, as she says “we know a thing or two about hurricanes.” Chris does her share of traveling, and thought that her gold premiere (or something like that) status with a well-known hotel chain might help her find something. She expressed some surprise that the her hotel system concierge could not find any rooms either. Undaunted, Chris started plying her VRBO (vacation rentals by owner) connections, and actually made a connection for us north of town in the Woodlands.
Saturday night sister-in-law “Cilly” sends an e-mail with an RV solution spelled out in some detail about how long you can get along with your own water and gas.
Our solution: We will be staying in a Howard Johnson hotel on South Main near the Astrodome. It’s not my first choice of hotels or neighborhoods, but it will do. We had to make three separate reservations (and three separate rooms) to cover the entire time we will be there. The third reservation was for Sept. 24-26. We did this on a “Priceline” type of site called Hotwire. You do not know the specific hotel you are getting until you have paid for it. You are told (in this case) it is a “two star” hotel near Reliant Park / Astrodome. At the end it turned out to be the same hotel our at which our other two reservations were. It appears that Saturday mid-morning they were the only game in town.
I suspect more rooms will become available as the week proceeds, but we are “locked in” now. We will be there for the duration of this trip.