2024 Road Trip Plans

[Hunty2022]

I'm very likely to head out on a trip to Waynesboro and/or Harrisonburg today.

[MATraveler128]

The last 2 weeks or so in August I plan to drive down to Florida before starting college back up in September.

[hbelkins]

I have a couple of in-state work-related trips coming up in May. First will be to Bowling Green, which will involve KY 30, KY 80, the Cumberland Parkway, and I-65 on the way down (probably will take the BG Parkway back to Lexington on the return trip). The second one is in northern Kentucky (Campbell County) so I will probably take US 27 north from Paris to avoid the I-75 mess. Return trip likely to be KY 9 (AA Highway) to KY 11.

[Quillz]

Oh, so I just found out I have a flight booked to Boston this Sunday so we can drive up to Vermont to view the eclipse. I guess it will be a 3-5 hour drive. Originally it was going to be Dallas but now it's almost certain it won't be viewable there.

I'd be nice if the people who organized the trip told me a little earlier.

[Rothman]

Oh, so I just found out I have a flight booked to Boston this Sunday so we can drive up to Vermont to view the eclipse. I guess it will be a 3-5 hour drive. Originally it was going to be Dallas but now it's almost certain it won't be viewable there.

I'd be nice if the people who organized the trip told me a little earlier.

They organized it without you?

Told you what, exactly?

[Quillz]

Oh, so I just found out I have a flight booked to Boston this Sunday so we can drive up to Vermont to view the eclipse. I guess it will be a 3-5 hour drive. Originally it was going to be Dallas but now it's almost certain it won't be viewable there.

I'd be nice if the people who organized the trip told me a little earlier.

They organized it without you?

Told you what, exactly?

It was a trip to Dallas originally. Told me last night "oh it's now going to be Vermont." They changed it like a week ago and forgot to mention it.

You only have a limited window to get a refund/credit for a flight you aren't taking. And I had to cancel a car reservation.

[Rothman]

Oh, so I just found out I have a flight booked to Boston this Sunday so we can drive up to Vermont to view the eclipse. I guess it will be a 3-5 hour drive. Originally it was going to be Dallas but now it's almost certain it won't be viewable there.

I'd be nice if the people who organized the trip told me a little earlier.

They organized it without you?

Told you what, exactly?

It was a trip to Dallas originally. Told me last night "oh it's now going to be Vermont." They changed it like a week ago and forgot to mention it.

You only have a limited window to get a refund/credit for a flight you aren't taking. And I had to cancel a car reservation.

Who are these people to you?  If they're just friends, why aren't you involved in the organizing of the trip?

[Quillz]

Some family members. I originally had no intention of going, then figured why not, might not get another chance to see an eclipse. So they just sort of planned it and added me last minute. All is sorted now, just would have liked some earlier notice they changed plans.

[Rothman]

Some family members. I originally had no intention of going, then figured why not, might not get another chance to see an eclipse. So they just sort of planned it and added me last minute. All is sorted now, just would have liked some earlier notice they changed plans.

Wonder if it was simply due to weather and therefore earlier notice was not possible.

Quite a good move to changing the travel plans, though, given forecasts which are pretty good this close in.

[webny99]

Cross-posting this from the eclipse thread since it fits better here and I don't want to derail that thread:
 

...
TX 130 is your friend.

+1

No need to use I-35 south of Georgetown.  As long as you can use a toll tag or pay-by-plate.

On eclipse day, it will likely not be free-flowing, though.

I'm not sure what the toll rates are like on TX 130, but if they're prohibitive for some non-zero number of drivers, and considering that typical traffic on TX 130 is probably pretty light and moves at 80+ mph, you'd be surprised what it could take to cause significant congestion.

I have to walk back this statement after experiencing Austin traffic for the first time last week. Driving from Waco to north of San Antonio, I had wanted to take I-35 straight through downtown Austin since it was my first time in the area, but it was going to cost upwards of 25 minutes (and this was after 7PM on a Thursday!), so we took TX130 to TX45 instead. That route was mostly free-flowing, although I can see a need for six lanes on the northernmost leg of TX130.

I foolishly thought that were past the worst of it after rejoining I-35, but I could not have been more wrong. That stretch of I-35 between TX45 near Buda and Loop 1604 quickly skyrocketed to my least-favorite interstates of all time (it actually reminded me quite a bit of the QEW between Burlington and Grimsby, which is not a compliment). The first few miles were stop and go, then it opened up a bit but there was absolutely no chance for cruise setting - just one heavy wolf pack of traffic after another with swarms of slow traffic in the left lane. And then there was an incident near Selma that turned out to be the most insane case of groupthink I've ever encountered. I-35 SB was reduced to a single lane and there seemed to be a moving construction zone up ahead that no one could get past, but as the construction vehicles moved past Exit 173, some drivers must not have realized the left lane was still open, so they started exiting to the service road and everyone behind them followed. By that point, the construction work must have closed the next on-ramp from the service road, so traffic, which was already crawling, came to a dead stop and did not move an inch for close to five minutes. When it finally started moving and we got to Exit 173, a few cars behind us realized that the left lane of I-35 was open and started sailing by the ensuing mess on the service road. Figures. I'm sure it cleared up behind us, but that still ranks very high on my list of "most frustrating traffic jams".

It's too bad that section sticks out in my memory because the rest of the trip was quite pleasant, and I found driving in Texas to be a pretty good experience overall. There is a bit of truth to the stereotype that Texans either speed excessively or drive very slowly, but everyone seems to respect others on the road and there was hardly any left lane camping aside from the aforementioned section of I-35 - and even that wouldn't have been so bad if this New Yorkers' patience wasn't wearing thin after a long day of traveling.

[D-Dey65]

My proposed second Florida Big Bend day trip is happening this Wednesday. If I wait until Thursday, it'll rain, and if I wait until Friday, the roads will still be wet from Thursday.

The next one, might be the Plant City-Lakeland area, and possibly even the USF Library in Tampa. From one of the previous times I was there, it was the only place besides the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts where I could look up the schedules for TV Guides in NYC.

[Quillz]

Flying back from Boston. My eclipse trip changed from Vermont to Maine. Houlton, just west of the Canadian border. Amazing day and visibility, absolutely perfect view of the corona!

[CtrlAltDel]

I wouldn't call it a plan, but I had a good trip for the eclipse yesterday, although it was one more suited for someone a bit younger. To avoid clouds in the totality zone, I drove 325 miles or so to southwestern Arkansas, another 100 or so to avoid clouds when I was there, and then another 325 miles back home.

I left at 10 pm the night before, once I finished the work I needed to have done before I got back. While pretty late, I experienced almost no traffic after the first hour or so of the drive, which was nice. Restaurants open 24 hours though are in shorter supply than they used to be, so I made do with various different kinds of M&Ms. The crunchy cookie ones are not all that good.

I arrived at about 4 am or so, and decided to sleep in the parking lot of a Walmart, fearing that all hotels would have no vacancies. That said, I saw some half-empty parking lots, so who knows. At about 7 or so, I warmed up a bit in the store, and went to McDonald's for food and wifi to figure out where I should end up going, using the cloud map I found. I then went to that place, only to leave when the forecast changed. I was actually between places when the eclipse was really starting to get going, when I decided to pull off onto a logging road and hope for the best. And while there were some clouds at the start, they faded by totality.

Then, after watching the ending of the eclipse a bit, I headed back home, which went fairly well. Although, at this point, with only three hours of car sleep, I was pretty tired. The drive went smoothly, until I got to Tyler when I hit one hell of a storm. After only five minutes of rain, the streets were flooded. I was debating stopping for the day, but I saw online that if I could get ahead of that bit of storm, I could head off the rest of them that were approaching, which is what I did, arriving back in College Station at about 9:30, with 786.1 more miles under my belt.

[1995hoo]

We just made airline reservations for a trip to Florida for our niece's high school graduation in Broward County and to visit some other relatives and friends. Main thing I'm trying to figure out now is some new routes to pass through some very familiar territory. Our second stop is in Fort Myers. We've never taken US-41 all the way across the Everglades (the only time we've gone out that way was to visit Shark Valley), so maybe I'll use that instead of I-75. Or perhaps we could take I-75 partway, then cut north through Immokalee to FL-82 into Fort Myers. Not going to do the longer way around through South Bay and Clewiston because we've been that way before and it takes substantially longer.

Our third stop is in Venice and I'm at a loss for any new routes to get there from Fort Myers, though. (We fly home from Sarasota after flying into Fort Lauderdale. In a way, that's too bad because it would have allowed for taking some of the back roads across the state if we had to go back across, but it's certainly far more convenient.)

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Returned from Texas yesterday. While I had to compromise with a non-roadgeek, I did get a few things done. I clinched I-35W and I-410 in Texas, but a bid to clinch US 57 was thwarted due to a major crash that had the road closed down about halfway to Eagle Pass.

[D-Dey65]

Returned from Texas yesterday. While I had to compromise with a non-roadgeek, I did get a few things done. I clinched I-35W and I-410 in Texas, but a bid to clinch US 57 was thwarted due to a major crash that had the road closed down about halfway to Eagle Pass.

One thing I like about taking long road trips by myself is that I don't have to compromise with any non-roadgeeks. One thing I don't like is that I get massive leg cramps in the night once they're over.

Anyway, my Big Bend trip is done. Plant City should be next. I also want to start adding a Williston-area trip to my list of trips.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Returned from Texas yesterday. While I had to compromise with a non-roadgeek, I did get a few things done. I clinched I-35W and I-410 in Texas, but a bid to clinch US 57 was thwarted due to a major crash that had the road closed down about halfway to Eagle Pass.

One thing I like about taking long road trips by myself is that I don't have to compromise with any non-roadgeeks. One thing I don't like is that I get massive leg cramps in the night once they're over.

I agree. I don't road trip with other people much but this friend had been pushing for a few years so we finally did it.

[hbelkins]

One thing I like about taking long road trips by myself is that I don't have to compromise with any non-roadgeeks. One thing I don't like is that I get massive leg cramps in the night once they're over.

I'm with you there. I lost out on a chance to get a full clinch of I-70 from Cove Fort to Baltimore* because I couldn't convince my brother to jump over to I-15 from US 89 north of Panguitch to be in a position to drive the westernmost miles of I-70.

*Of course I-70 doesn't actually serve Baltimore, according to one forum member

[webny99]

Well, the only thing worse than missing clinching opportunities due to traveling with others, is missing them due to poor planning or not realizing you had the chance. I've missed I-790, MN 62, MN 371B, and TX Loop 2 this way and it is intensely frustrating.

[Quillz]

My quick trip to Maine for the eclipse has inspired me to return and drive the entirety of US-1. Having been to Maine back in 2005, it always reminded me as the east coast version of Oregon: rocky coasts, lighthouses. I mainly used I-95 but was on US-1 in a few spots here and there. Looked at a map, it will be a pretty long drive, but I think it will be nice. Probably won't do it this year, though, although we'll see. I did visit Acadia National Park last time I was there, but I had always wanted to return.

[Quillz]

Well, the only thing worse than missing clinching opportunities due to traveling with others, is missing them due to poor planning or not realizing you had the chance. I've missed I-790, MN 62, MN 371B, and TX Loop 2 this way and it is intensely frustrating.

On the way back from the eclipse, I asked if we could drive just a single mile to the Canadian border so we could at least see the "END I-95" sign, but they didn't want to do it.