To finish the story...
We got back on 81 out of Johnson city about 4pm tuesday, and headed north. We decided to make it a relatively short night, and stopped in Waynesboro VA at about 9, to actually get some rest.
We ended up sleeping in, an didn't leave Waynesboro 'til lunch, for the 10-ish hour trip remaining.
Originally we were going to stop in southwest New Jersey to visit my aunt, but she had to cancel on us, so we went direct from Waynesboro to
We wanted to avoid the 95 corridor through the DC and Baltimore areas, particularly because of bad weather. There was nasty freezing rain south of the I-78, and snow north of it.
Thankfully, there was a relatively clear corridor along the 78, and the trip through Harrisburg and Allentown was decent. For some reason though, I always forget how insane the lehigh valley gap down from Bethlehem into New Jersey can be. Especially in the dark, in the rain.
I swear to you, we saw more concentrated potentially fatal stupidity in the first 25 miles in New Jersey, than in the previous 2500 miles combined.
We decided to go straight through NYC and the surrounding areas, on the 95, thinking that doing so relatively late at night would be enough easier, that it would be better than the extra 40 miles to go around.
We were wrong.
Oh it was fast enough, just overwhelmingly painfully stupid. Not worth the aggravation.
So, we pulled into our hotel near my dads place at about 2am thanksgiving morning. Had a great holiday with my dad and family. They insisted we stay the night, and we spent much of the next day with my dad, heading up to my Aunts place in New Hampshire Friday afternoon.
I've pretty much been asleep as much as possible since then. I get on an airplane to Chicago in less than 8 hours, and I haven't really finished recovering from the trip.
All told, including detours and re-rerouting, it was 3151.5 miles, from Kearny, AZ, to New Hampton New Hampshire. Google maps says its only 2624 miles by shortest routing, and 2,864 by our chosen routing. The rest was detours etc...
I drove all but 150 of those miles; the last 150, from somewhere in CT, to our hotel near my dads place. I was too exhausted to drive any more that day and Mel took over.
We had 60 hours of "key on" time, for an average speed of 52.5 miles per hour, but about 10 hours of that was just sitting, in traffic, eating in parking lots etc... so our actual rolling average was about 63mph.
All told it took us exactly 7 days; but that included a day lost to the storm in texas, more than a full day with my dad, and a half day in tennessee with Mels family. Straight through, and without the weather and the detours, we could have done it in four long days, or five reasonable days.
Now we get to do it all again, two more times (once back to arizona, then once back from arizona with the trailer and the dogs).
