Travel Tuesday: Road Trips

We have an upcoming road trip.  I really only think about driving times, not distances when I am planning trips like this, the longest day of driving will be 6-7 hours. Overall distance 1,200 - 1,500 miles spread over a week or so.  

I am always surprised by friends in Europe who faint at the thought of 3 or 4 hours of driving in a single day, who are sure they will fall off the edge of the earth if they drive more than a 200 miles.  Living in north America, the land of vast distances, road trips can be thousands of miles.  I have driven from Washington DC to Florida, 850 miles in a single day several times (it is more pleasant to break that up into two days.) 

As we have gotten older, we try to limit driving to 6 or 7 hours in a day.  The trip from home to Lexington Kentucky is about about 9 -10 hours driving time, we usually break that into two days.  

I had to change my office schedule, around an unexpected meeting on the first day of the September road trip.  I cancelled a department meeting, we will leave early, and be in the hotel in time for the mid afternoon meeting.  It was either that or drive late, and I have reached the age where driving after dark is more difficult.  No reason to deny it, night time eye sight changes with age.  I can still do it, but it takes more concentration and that is tiring.  No reason to be driving in the mountains after dark.  

My first road trips were in early 1960's Mercurys.  My father had a couple of them in a row. My grandfather bought a new one every other year for 30 years, and my father would often buy his two year old one.  I saw one parked recently, and took this close up of the emblems.