Better Outside Than In: Driving, driving, driving

Friday, March 20, 2020

Driving, driving, driving

Driving to get back to New England. Way too much driving considering I only spent about a week out West. Not worth it but need to get back. The drive back was on I40 which has many places to check out if you have time to actually check them out.
I think it is near Amarillo that I saw many hundreds of wind mills. They went on for 25+ miles. Big ones. Ankansas and Tennessee have a lot of lakes and state parks to check out. I did drive through Smokey Mountain NP to get an idea of what that is like. Hiked for about 2 hours. Some nice peaks to climb there and looked like a nice place to check out some day.

3/20 - Holbrook AZ -> Weatherford OK (700 miles)
3/21 - Weatherford OK -> Cookville TN (825 miles)
3/22 - Cookville TN -> Sanford NC (400 miles)
3/23 - Rest day
3/24 - Worst day yet! 900 miles Sanford NC -> Moultonborough NH. There is nothing good to say about 95. Painful day but it did end.

My niece Katherine and her husband Chris live in NC. A very nice area! Their development has a lake or multiple lakes, golf course, and plenty of places to run/walk. Their house is very large and very nice and rents for $1500/month! This house in VT would have taxes of 1500/month. Forget about renting it. We went on a very nice walk in a park about 40 minutes away that had a large lake and a good piece of woods to hike around. It is early Spring there so lots of birds, early green leaves, and what you would get in May in VT.

Driving notes:
90 is a good east/west route. I did this 2 years ago. Lots to see but far North so not good for winter.
80 - Not great. Lots of ugly cities. Not much to see. Tolls and poor truck stops until you get further West.
70 - Interesting and a good route. Big pass (10K) feet in Colorado though so need to watch weather.
40 - A good one. Lots to see on this route and good winter route since it is so far South.
95 - Pure misery. Lots of big ugly cities, traffic, tolls, construction. I was driving it in the middle of a pandemic and there was still too much traffic.

Note that may be related to virus. Near cities driving on 80 west and 95 at end of trip some people were driving at suicidal speeds in the cities in heavy traffic. Multiple nuts going 90-100+ weaving like maniacs around cars going 70-75. One small problem and a bunch of people die. I say it could be related to virus since there may be too much traffic to even move under "normal" conditions.

For some reason we are totally fine with many deaths on highways. I saw at least one fatal accident on the trip and the US has about 40,000 car deaths every year. They had signs in Utah talking about all the deaths in February and to be careful yet the speed limit is 80 and people are going 90+ all the time. Again, if something happens, it is time for a hearse at those speeds.

I would say I90 if it is summer and I40 if it is winter. Do not go on 95 unless you are forced at gun point. A miserable stretch of pavement.