The Two Weeks That Did Not Suck, Part II

So we were up and at 'em early the next morning because it's about 15-16 hours from Virginia Beach, Virginia to Pensacola, Florida, give or take. We had breakfast and were on the road by about 9:30 in the morning for a good planned stretch of driving on the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System (I like Ike!)

We took U.S. Highway 58 west passing by Norfolk and a lot of the other Hampton Roads cities in the area. It's a nice harbor complete with shipyards and a Naval Base... reminds me of old industrial America. A little further down the road is a city called Suffolk. We hit a lot of traffic there (never a good sign in the early-goings of a long haul) but we were stopped long enough to see a police car that had pulled over another car. Moving passed it we saw a cop on the ground struggling with a guy with long hair, trying to cuff him, and another officer running toward the scene. It was a scene straight out of the TV show "COPS" (and this was a Monday morning just after 10 a.m., mind you....drugs???) Moving along we saw two more police cruisers rushing toward the action.

The next few hours were inconsequential. Rural Virginia toward I-95, which turns into one of the most boring drives through the Carolinas. The original plan was to take 95 to 10 in Jacksonville. I kind of wanted to head further west because I've done the 95 drive down there on several occasions and wanted to try something new. After passing South of the Border (fireworks, hotels, amusement park, food...random. They must do well because they were in business back when my family and I drove to Disneyworld back in 1998) we got off the highway and grabbed a bite to eat and decided to head west on I-20 toward Columbia. I-95 in NC/SC is billboards and truck stops, 20 is more scenic with hills.

We bypassed Atlanta at around 7 p.m. that night and the Braves were playing against the Cardinals there at Turner Field. The game was on the radio but you get each station for only around two hours or so as you cover more and more ground. I kind of had rekindled thoughts of my classic fantasy to make a road trip around the country, stopping at every Major League ballpark, and sort of wanted to see the game, but it made absolutely no sense money/timewise.

We ended up that night staying at the Travelodge in Opelika, Alabama, across the Chattahoochie River and into the Central Time Zone (kinda near Auburn University.... Bo Jackson, anyone??) The next morning, both of us wearing Yankees caps, we discovered it was Confederate Memorial Day in Alabama, so people were naturally giving us strange looks, the people in the hotel started talking about Jair Jurrjens and the Braves. We made a stop for breakfast in Montgomery, the capital, before trekking the rest of the way south towards Pensacola... a good 21-22 hours from Clinton, New Jersey. This blog will continue in Part III.