Monday - August 1, 2011 - We were off. The hangovers were only a slight annoyance on the beautiful Monday morning in Milton, DE. Amidst competing sets of directions, which oddly enough had us going on all the same roads, in all the same directions, we made our way to our first destination: scrapple & egg breakfast sandwiches. And although I love scrapple, I opted for the less adventurous ham & egg. The traffic was light but I knew we would be tested in just a few hours after crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge into Annapolis, then into the crucible of the DC beltway at lunchtime.
All in all I would say Dave and Jim did commendable jobs of driving in the maddening traffic, although I will say my knuckles were white for most of the trip into and around DC. After lunch I took over for Dave and was glad to finally get behind the wheel of Rupert. Yes, we named our Honda Pilot "Rupert." Hopping on to Route 66 (not the famous, but still useful) we eventually met up with Route 81, which was going to be our home for a few hundred miles over the next two days. For any of you who have traveled along Rt 81 you will remember what a busy trucking route that is. The day was our longest so far, and the opposite of the cake-walk that we had leaving Philly the day before and hopping down to Milton. When we finally pulled in to Roanoke, VA that evening we were all pretty frazzled. Our original plan was to make it to Wytheville, VA, but needed to break for reasons I'm about to explain. The rental truck, although being a honking beast, didn't quite have the get up and go to handle the hills of southern Virginia. Jim had struggled with it for many miles on the ups and downs. Not being able to climb a hill above 45 mph was nerve-wracking. Dave and I had been speeding along at 70 most of the trip and hadn't known Jim's predicament. Consulting with each other over the phone we decided to cut the day short and stop outside Roanoke, which we felt was a good enough distance for the day.
Dinner, drinks, and a swim (for me), and we all seemed to be 'settled' for the night. We did, however, have a brain-twisting session of 'how do we avoid all these hills tomorrow!?' That's easier said than done, especially considering where we are. The straightest shot for us had the route continuing down 81 to Chattanooga, TN, then on to Tuscaloosa, MS. Another day of fighting with hilly ups and downs wasn't in the cards for Jim though, and we agonized over adding a few more hours to our overall trip by diverting instead to Atlanta, then on to New Orleans from there. In the end it all worked out, and we settled on the Atlanta – NOLA route. I'm glad we did.
