Travel In The Green Rut

Meridian, Mississippi

Rolling out of bed this morning started a long day of travel. After putting together my stuff for the trip, the truck rolled out of the campground at 8:02 am for the trip to Alabama. It was 83 degrees and very humid. Some where in Louisana The truck got it's first fill up of over $100. OUCH,OUCH even at 19 mpg. Finally my eyes told me to call it a day about 5:30 pm. When I get too tired my eyes start to lose the focus needed to function well while driving. This time they started giving me trouble about ten minutes before I found the motel of choice.

It is a super 8 with the special feature of being next door to a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Supper was two chicken breasts on the bone with BBQ sauce, corn on the cob, potato salad, corn bread and southern style sweet tea. What a belly explosion all that food will make! As I waddled back to the motel, some faint particle of senile memory functioned enough to make me stop at the truck and pick up the rest of my neccessities for the night. That was a welcome event, because I usually forget something until I am about to get into the shower, then I have to get dressed again to go get it out of the truck. Then the conquest of the stairs was next. Upper level rooms are my preference for the quiet from kids stomping around on the floor above. Finally after heroic efforts on the stairs, I got into the room and found the perfect chair sitting in front of the computer. Perfect because it is able to hold my fat body without collapsing.

The road scenery today was typical forest of SE USA. It is like driving in a rut with green walls and gray floor with blue sky above. My preference is to be able to see past the fence line at the side of the road. Today was not boring though. I-10 from Beaumont Texas all the way to Slidell La. was either getting very hard rain or construction had every thing slowed down to a crawl. Once I turned north there was only a little construction and it did not slow us much at all. When I head back to Texas, I will stay up on I-20 and come back to Kemah by way of the state highways in Texas.

The main reason for this road trip instead of flying is to test my limits of daily travel now. Three years ago I could easily drive 14 hours or about 750 miles at a time. Since my eyes have started to get a little cataract development, I am more limited. Towing is limited to about 300 miles a day if on the Interstates. It seems like my future road trips will have to be planned with a more limited daily range. If the airfares stay like they are now in relation to the fuel prices, flying is about the same cost as driving when there is only one person involved.

Tomorrow is only about five hours of driving, so it will be an easy day. My plan is to take some back roads I have never been on, to try to have tooooo much fun. TheOFM