Summer Travel Map

Friday, December 18, 2009

A great trip east so far

December 18, 2009
Cuba, AL

We have had a great trip east, leaving Arizona on Wednesday morning and making it to the Mississippi/Alabama border tonight.  We've had good weather and mostly trailing winds; haven't seen a cloud since we left AZ!

Day 1 was an easy drive, I-10 east out of Phoenix, to and through New Mexico, and to the Texas border.  There's a truck stop we know at "Exit 0", and we fueled up and parked in the RV parking section for the night.  It was reasonably quiet but chilly in the morning.  We were up at 7:00 and on the road a little after 8:00.

Day 2 was a long day.  We had a little over 11 hours of driving to do, 12 hours with rest/meal breaks.  Plus, we lost an hour with the time zone change from Mountain to Central.  We made the transition from I-10 to I-20 in West Texas.  Our destination was the WalMart in Weatherford, TX, just west of Dallas/Fort Worth, and we rolled in just after 9:00 PM.  We'd stopped for dinner (pre-made pasta) a couple of hours earlier, so we were content to just pick up a few things in the store, verify that it was OK to stay the night (there were 2 other RVs in the lot but they looked like residence-challenged folks as opposed to "WalMart Campers"), and hit the hay.  We slept well, since the store was off the highway and pretty quiet.

Today was another long day, but not as much as yesterday.  We stayed on I-20 all the way, stopping for fuel in Dallas and crossing Louisiana and Mississippi to stop just over the line in Alabama.  We'll have a short 3+ hour drive to Birmingham tomorrow, where we'll visit with friends before heading to Albertville for Christmas with family early next week.

It's interesting to see the differing road conditions in the various states.  Western states have generally good roads.  West Texas roads are all 80 MPH zones; the US AutoBahn.  By East Texas, things start to deteriorate somewhat.  Louisiana has some of the worst roads in the country, with lots of concrete slabs where the expansion joints are uneven, even if the concrete was paved over.  It's just 190 miles of thump-thump-thump.  Mississippi isn't much better, with the "thumps" localized to the major cities (Jackson, Meridian), but the "country" sections of I-20 have heaves (can't be frost heaves this far south, but they're the same thing) that rival what we had going to/from Alaska last summer.  The people who are responsible for maintenance should be ashamed of themselves.

On the other hand, Interstate Rest Areas are a whole different story.  Arizona has closed almost all of theirs (budget cuts).  New Mexico and Texas have a mix of old and new sites.  Louisiana and Mississippi appear to be rebuilding theirs with stimulus money and the results are great - large parking areas set back from the road to minimize traffic noise.  The I-20 Welcome Center here in Alabama is one of our favorites, with the truck/RV parking completely blocked from the road; we should have a quiet night.

OK; enough for now...

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