Thursday, June 24, 2010

Traveling to Connecticut

The drive up wen much better than expected. I ran all the numbers and
talked with people and decided on I-81 to I-84, which avoids I-95
almost entirely and eliminates and the drive through DC, Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and New York City. On the way back, we will use 95 and
go through all of these. Having grown up in DC, a disaster causing a 5
hour interstate closure always looms large on the horizon. There was
in fact such a problem on I-270 in Maryland when we left Wednesday
morning. One crash can cause miles of 5 MPH driving.

As part of that number crunching to plan the trip, I ended up with a
lot of data. If you punch in the address directly, the GPS and Google
Maps will take you straight up 95. So I had to enter multiple segments
into the GPS to try different routes. Google Maps makes it easier to
try different routes, but you can't import the routes into my GPS and
the time estimates are different. Anyway, all those numbers gave me a
12+ hour estimate from my parents in Manassas, Va to Hammonasset State
Park in Madison, Ct. Somewhere I double counted, and the drive was
only 10 hours with stops and a few slow downs. We arrived at about 5
PM. The temperature was already cooling down, which is completely
different from Durham, where it's still 80+ degrees after dark.

You are a genius Lara! You found a beach with comfortable camping.
The campground is very large. There are some trees, but you don't
have the private alcove afforded in NC mountain camping., so we are
much closer to our neighbors. Sound wasn't a issue at night. Unlike
Lake Powhatan last week, we didn't hear anyone at 11 PM discussing the
merits of urinating in the shower: "Dude it's got a drain." and "Dude
I'm going to use that later" then "just rinse it off."

Instead I saw a beautiful full moon glistening off the water. I also
found the ice cream vending machine in case we get hungry at night.
I'm more practical than romantic.

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