Off On Another Adventure

Two days on the road so far...a short journal entry.

Speedy was just about all packed on Friday evening, with only coffee and computers to left to store, so it was a relatively early exit on Saturday. After winterizing the house, we were on the road by 8:30am. We took our most traveled route to New York and New Jersey—out the Mass Pike, down to Hartford, across to Danbury and over the Tappan Zee Bridge. It was uneventful aside from the dead (just a loose fuse) radio and the one hour traffic jam just before the bridge. After that it was I-287 around the City and the NJ suburbs to I-78 and on to Harrisburg, PA where we spent the night at the Cracker Barrel restaurant parking lot.

Today we continued west. We left Harrisburg in the pre-dawn fog and took the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the twisty road of superhighways, through on and off fog and several mountains to I-70 and Wheeling, WV, then into Ohio. The road was interesting driving through the mountains with the forests in autumn colors...at least until we reached Ohio.

The road turned flat, straight and pretty boring for the rest of the day, with only the confusing tangle of highways and exits through Columbus to break it up. We reached Indiana by mid-afternoon, but the highway stayed just as flat and straight. By sunset, we'd gone as far as Terre Haute and we have once again stopped at a Cracker barrel for the night.

The meals are inexpensive and we can stay in their quiet, if a little too bright, back parking lot overnight. We've often chosen Cracker barrels while in long-distance travel mode. They are close to the highway (no searching for a campground miles from the road in the dark), the food is okay, they are free and they are much quieter than most of the other free overnight stops, truck stops and Walmarts.

We are about 200 miles from St. Louis and "the West" (or at least the midwest). Once we get past there, hopefully by noon tomorrow, we plan to get off the Interstates and onto secondary highways all the way to New Mexico.