Time And Distance

We went to visit my parents in Blairsville, Georgia last week. Carmen drove, I navigated. As usual. Before setting out, I did some research for her. The Rand McNally Road Atlas told me that the distance from Pittsburgh to Atlanta was 684 miles. I estimated that since Blairsville is 100 miles this side of Atlanta and Meadville is 90 miles this side of Pittsburgh, 684 was a fair guess.

Google Maps told me it was more than 700 miles whichever way I took us. Twelve and a half hours was the time estimate. That doesn't count stopping for gas, lunch or road construction. So I tried to figure out the best way to go based on shortness of distance from Interstate Highway to Blairsville. Two years ago we went by way of I-85 and US 76 in South Carolina. I knew we didn't want to go that way again. It is a long roller coaster ride on narrow roads. Carmen doesn't like roller coasters. Or narrow roads.

My route took us to the west side, I-75 to Cleveland, Tennessee and US 64/74 east to North Carolina, then US 19 south to US 76. There was roller coaster action, but much less than the other way. Just now I adjusted the Google Maps route to the way we actually went. 773 miles. However it came to pass, Carmen got it lodged in her mind that it was a ten hour drive. Not.

We left at 7:00 in the morning. I called from the Slippery Rock rest area to tell my parents that I estimated we'd be there between 7:30 and 8:00. Carmen was not in the car at that time.

We had checked out of the library the complete, unabridged "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" on fifteen cassettes to listen to on the trip. Carmen has never read the trilogy, but liked the movies. I had been telling her about the details in the Harry Potter books that had been stolen directly from the Lord of the Rings books, so while we listened we made a verbal list of things, some mere suggested ideas and some unabashed steals, that we noticed. It was even more prevalent than I remembered. By the third cassette we had identified about fifteen of them.

We had lunch at a Cracker Barrel in West Virginia. We stopped for gas in West Virginia and a Confederate holdout gas station in Tennessee, and it was approaching dusk as we were suddenly brought to a standstill on I-75. We got out the GPS and fired her up. Hermione told us we'd be arriving at our destination at 8:35. I called with this new information. They said they were holding dinner for us, so don't stop to eat. By the time we busted out of the construction zone our arrival time was after 9:00. We exited on Us 64/74 and for a while it was still fairly flat divided highway. From Ocoee to Ducktown, however, it was a long twenty miles of roller coaster ride. We followed the Ocoee River, and for me it was mostly a beautiful scenic drive. For Carmen it was diminishing visibility and hair raising driving all the way. The interesting thing for me was seeing how this beautiful natural setting had been altered for the Atlanta Summer Olympics in 1996, with parking lots, cleared areas for grandstands, and towers and rigging for cameras etc. Under different circumstances I would have been wanting to investigate. But it was nearly pitch dark before we were on Route 68, Hermione's choice of southbound roads. The ten miles to our old friend Route 76 at Blue Ridge was the last of the anxiety of unfamiliar territory, and we breathed more easily the rest of the way. Our actual arrival time was 9:45. We ate a hasty dinner before collapsing into bed, window AC blasting away the heat.

We had a lovely visit with my mommy and daddy. Meals were eaten on the deck overlooking the Nationat Forest, with bird feeders hanging high in the air for our bird watching pleasure. Goldfinches, tufted titmice, nuthatches, chickadees and an indigo bunting were the stars of that show, with a few bit players for variety. A raccoon ripped its way through the screen Sunday night and ravaged the bags of birdseed on the deck - less unwelcome than the bear that did the same a couple of years ago..

Sunday the womenfolk went to church. The nearest neighbors, Darrel and Mary, are Lutheran, and Darrel is a minister. Carmen was happy to experience a mainstream Protestant service, and my mom was happy to get out of the house without my dad. That evening there was dinner and conversation at Darrel and Mary's house until late (9:30!) that night.

Our original plan was to drive home on Tuesday, but we decided to leave early Monday afternoon instead. Another fifteen hour day on the road we did not want. Darrel told us that the best roads to the Interstate Highway System were the route to Ashville, North Carolina. It also happens to be the most direct route. Carmen checked Hermione right off the bat. She said it was 586 miles to home. We scratched our heads over that one. We made reservations at the Hampton Inn in Charleston, West Virginia.

The US highways to Ashville were indeed the best we'd seen. We were happy to get to I-40, and then the exit to turn north on 240. That is where we came to a dead stop. For an hour and a half we sat there while emergency vehicles and a Hazmat Cleanup rig squeezed by. The people milling around us had heard that a diesel tanker had crashed and spilled its load, and that we were stuck for three and a half hours. We cancelled our reservation and made one at Johnson, Tennessee instead. The afternoon sun was pretty hot, but then it clouded over and a breeze kicked up. By the time we got moving, two hours ahead of the prediction, a massive thunderstorm was upon us. We could have gone another hour or two beyond Johnson, but we decided to call it a day. We lolled about in the air conditioning and watched TV while we ate the leftovers my mother had packed for us for dinner

Tuesday was pretty much uneventful. We listened to four more cassettes and some songs from my MP3 player. Hermione bitched at us whenever we strayed from her path, barking at us to make U-turns until she finally relented. The worst was US 19 from Tesla to Prosperity, West Virginia. It cuts across the triangle formed by I-77 and I-79 to Charleston. We were unwilling to risk a roller coaster ride. Hermione thought differently. We were almost to Charleston before she stopped recalculating.

We were in Pennsylvania, north of Pittsburgh, when I figured out Hermione's dirty secret. Carmen asked me to check the distance from there to our house. I did so. It said thirty one miles. I went back to the regular running commentary. She said it was thirty three miles to the exit. Thirty three to the exit, but thirty one total? AHA! Thirty one as the grow flies! AHA! Carmen got that ten hours number from Hermione's point to point distance, which has nothing to do with taking roads that zig and zag right and left, up and down! AHA!

So we arrived home about 5:00 Tuesday. Carmen didn't go out of town again until Thursday early morning. She'll be back tomorrow.