Sunday, 24 April
We arrived from the OBX to our stix and brix home yesterday. Our projected 6-7 hours on the road turned into 10 hours of at times stop-and-go, stop-and-go driving, so I was in no mood to turn on the computer and post to the blog when we finally pulled into the driveway around 7:30p.
The drive was uneventful; it was the traffic that threw a wrench into our day. There was quite a bit of it from the moment we left the campground, but at least it was moving. Then, shortly after we hit I-64W, our trucker’s GPS sounded a heavy traffic alert and re-routed us to Route 460W. No problem; it added length to our trip, but again, the traffic was moving. All was going well until we hit I-95. This highway always has major traffic congestions unless you’re driving against traffic. Yesterday was no exception. The GPS once again sounded a heavy traffic warning, but once committed to I-95N, there were no good alternatives until we reached the junction and jumped onto Route 1 near Fredericksburg. It seemed to take us forever to get through the first couple of miles through the city, but after that it was smooth sailing with 55 mph (88 kph) speeds to our final turn-off onto SR 234N.
The red lines show our detours, which added about 20 miles to our original routing.
Lesson learned. If our travels include I-95 in the future, we won’t dally at the campground; we’ll leave early, early, early. Normally, we do that anyway, but knowing that a particularly hectic month of May is ahead of us, we found it difficult to leave the relaxing pace of our vacation behind.
Before putting the Phaeton to bed at the storage lot, we topped off the diesel at Fannon Petroleum Services. Their price of $3.94/gallon had not changed from the time we last filled up on 10 April, and was a heck of a lot better than the prices we saw in the OBX (ranging from $4.05 to $4.19). We ended up buying 72 gallons, which means we got 8.75 miles to the gallon on this trip. Not bad for a 40-foot beast with a toad following closely on its heels … (or should that be wheels).
As promised, I will be posting separate entries with photos of the places we explored. But as noted above, the days ahead promise to be quite hectic, so the blog entries may be a bit slow in coming. Have patience please :-) …
Really enjoyed following your route home. Happy Easter and glad you are home safely. Easter here is about kids and eggs and daffodils and the burst of Spring. The forest is my church. By the way, I just discovered SmugMug, possibly due to you, I'm not sure, but I do like it. In the process of uploading my years of photos. Might take awhile!
ReplyDeletewelcome home Erin and Mui!..Happy Easter to you both!..have a great week!!
ReplyDeleteA slow drive, but a safe drive. That's the important part. :)
ReplyDeleteSafe and sound..that is what is important. We have been paying between 4.07 and 4.25 for our diesel out west, but we have seen some stations close to the 5.00 mark!
ReplyDelete