Traffic and Pot Holes and Tolls, Oh My!

So we leave Massachusetts at about 11:00 in the morning. It’s a Sunday so we really didn’t think too much of it for the drive down to D.C. Our plan was to spend the night at our friend’s place and do dinner with him, etc. Matt decided that 95 south would be a better choice than trying to go I-84 through Hartford with the car trailer. Because every time we hit a bump the two of us looked in the side mirrors to make sure the trailer was still attached and that Little Car was still on top of it.

Remember the play “The Princess and the Pea” and how even on top of like 100 mattresses she could feel the teeny pea beneath her as she tried to sleep? Yeah, well the smallest pebble was paid attention to underneath those trailer wheels let me tell ya.

Luckily we didn’t have to worry about high speed bumps for very long because as soon as we got outside of Massachusetts we hit traffic. And then we sat in traffic through all of Rhode Island. All of Connecticut. All of New York. New Jersey. Maryland. Pretty much the only place we sailed through was Delaware but seriously, DE would have been the one state in the northeast I wouldn’t have minded to sit in traffic to get through seeing as though at its widest point it’s about 200 feet.

And to get through those 200 feet, the fabulous state of Delaware charged us about $6000 in tolls. That bridge is about 100 feet of the 200 feet of the state and they don’t just charge you to get on the thing, they charge you to get off it too. No wonder there’s so many signs for calling the Samaritans instead of jumping off, after paying the $5500 to get on the bridge you’re cleaned out and have no way to pay the next toll. If only the Samaritans would show up with a fist full of cash, that might help out more than the vocal support.

Somehow we managed to scrape enough change together to get into Virginia’s traffic and after many text messages we pulled onto our friend’s street at about 11:15 PM. Twelve hours on day one was not at all what I had hoped for but we were there and our bellies filled at Roy Rogers meant we were ready to crash.

Our friend and his girlfriend were such troopers and both hung out until we arrived. Not only did we only get to meet her for fourteen seconds but she baked us a whole bag of chocolate chip cookies for the road. How awesome is she?!

And those cookies were gone in a flash and were awesome to accompany the bag full of yummy road treats my mom tossed at us on the way out the door.

We crashed out and the next morning had breakfast with our friend before he had to head out to work and we headed out to make the long journey on to Cookeville, Tennessee.

Luckily there was no traffic to speak of after we got to the other side of the District and we were on the road. But man, let me tell you, getting to Knoxville from Virginia in a 16’ box truck with a car on a trailer is no fun task. At least for the temperature gauge. Those mountains were a challenge to traverse but we somehow made it up and over. And then the road just went on and on…