Tuesday, January 29, 2013

On the Road: Day 2

Day Two is complete and we arrived at our KOA campground (Lookout Mtn. KOA SW of Chattanooga in Trenton, GA) at 4 PM this afternoon. Plenty of time to check in and rest for a bit before dinner. We were thinking how this particular campground is very far away form the highway so we would not have any highway noises (Last night's campground abutted I-81.) when the freight trains started tooting their horns.*sigh*

At least today's travel was much better than yesterday's early morning snow. The sun shone brightly almost the entire day. Traffic moved along at very nice clip and there were no tie ups to speak of except a little stretch as we neared the end of the run around Chattanooga. A truck hauling a very wide load (some gigantic backhoe or crane on treads) and a little winding stretch of highway along with at least one car on the shoulder, caused a bottleneck.

We covered 370 miles starting at 8:30 AM, made one fuel stop, three rest stops--including one for lunch--and did some shopping at a Camping World before ending our day at the KOA.

Tomorrow, we will not be so lucky. Severe weather warnings are out for almost all of northeast Alabama--the part we will be traveling. High winds (25-30 mph with gusts to 40 or even 50 mph) will spell trouble. Possible tornadoes spell disaster. Sever thunderstorms.... Well, you get the picture.

If anything is to be viewed positively it is that all that should be over by the time we get to Birmingham 150 miles (2 1/2 hours?) to our southwest along I-59. The chance of precipitation drops significantly beyond there. The winds will still be a bear but not quite as high--I hope. We also gain an hour as we cross into the Central Time Zone.

Tomorrow we hope to make Slidell, Louisiana just east of New Orleans. That was originally a long day to begin with (450 miles and 7 hours--see the note about gaining an hour in the previous paragraph) but Mother Nature is going to make it just that much more difficult on us.

[UPDATE: I forgot to mention, it's 68 degrees at the campground...and the daffodils are in flower. If Terry asks me one more time if I want to become a "snowbird" I may have to feed her to a tornado tomorrow.]

1 comment:

Rev. Paul said...

I'm glad today was better.