500 Miles
November 11, 2023 – Day 44
Some of you may know the song 500 Miles by The Proclaimers. Here’s the chorus.
But I would walk 500 miles
“500 Miles” – The Proclaimers
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door
That was the plan for today. Technically it was 496 miles but it’s close enough to call it 500 miles. We were curious whether we could manage that big a drive. We were simultaneously looking forward to it and dreading it. We had no idea how easy or hard this would be.
It was hard.
Remember we said it’s nice to have goals? The goal was to be mobile around 7:15-7:30 a.m. We tried to leave early, really we did. Dark comes earlier now that we’re not on daylight savings time. Setting camp can be a chore and doing it in the dark complicates things. Consequently, our goal is to be parked and settled in by dark. When we departed at 9:15 a.m. we had already lost an hour and forty-five minutes of daylight.
We started with a 15 minutes drive to get out of the park. It went by quickly and the road was pretty.
See what we meant in the last post about the shoulder? This one is half as wide as the other day’s shoulder. We’ve seen worse where there’s only a fog line, then a couple inches of pavement, then it’s dirt/grass. And for some reason unknown to us they like to build the road up. That means if you leave the road you’re going into a ditch.
Susan likes taking the first shift. She got the white-knuckle experience of passing this oversized load.
We both dislike doing this especially if we have to get over onto the rumble strip to pass or when we are crossing a bridge and it gets narrow. These are all things you’re blissfully unaware of if you’ve only ever driven cars.
Later on we heard sirens. For a split second she wondered if it was meant for her. But she knew she wasn’t speeding or doing anything wrong. Then suddenly an Audi appeared and then cut in front of us closely followed by a cruiser who did the same thing and pulled the Audi over. Susan did a fast lane hop to give them some extra room.
As a side note, we rarely speed. We’re usually 5mph under the limit but today we were riding the limit, doing 68-69 mph in a 70 mph zone. Clifford slows down on hills. No way around that. A lot of times we slow to 60-63 mph no matter what we do. We’ve been as low as 35-40 mph on the steep ones. Sometimes you get lucky and have a climbing lane. Sometimes you don’t. The 39 mph we saw was when we were tucked in behind trucks doing 39 mph. There’s no point passing them doing 40-45 mph if you are just going to tie up traffic in the only other lane. We may be slow but we’re polite slow.
We drove down Music Highway. This sounds a lot fancier than it actually is. It’s just a section of I-40 from Memphis to Nashville.
Paul got the next bit of excitement for the day with the first of two delays. Notice he’s in the left lane. We’ve learned from other traffic jams that the right lane is bad if you come up upon an entrance ramp. It’s always chaos there. Left is best.
This delay was 24 minutes. We tried to decide if the alternate route that Garmin offered up was worth doing. Over the course of a few minutes we noticed the alternate route’s time was increasing. The delay on the planned route was already baked in at a steady at 24 minutes versus the alternate whose time kept creeping up because everybody was taking their GPS’s alternate route. We chose the route with the 24 minute delay. If you’re keeping track we’ve lost almost 2.25 hours at this point.
Near the scene of the accident, Paul was trying to move right because everybody in front of him was moving right. The trucker to our right rolled down his window and motioned us in front. Thanks trucker-man! We’ve found truckers are often polite. Paul found himself with empty highway in front. The accident had been cleared away and everybody zoomed away. We both made our lunch while rolling so we didn’t have a lunch break.
Soon we stopped for gas and found this weird pump.
Weird for two reasons, we’ve never seen a DEF pump before. (DEF is Diesel Exhaust Fluid) and we’ve never seen a pump that didn’t list the octane. This is important because Clifford’s engine requires 87 octane. Out west we were seeing 86 octane. We mixed the 86 with an 88 or 89 to keep the octane up because there was no other choice.
We passed the TVA Kingston Fossil Plant, it burns tons of coal and is currently undergoing environmental review. Good riddance.
Make a note, don’t speed in TN.
Notice again, how we are sort of in the left lane. In some states it’s the law to move over if anything is in the breakdown lane. We’ve been passed on the right which is a hazardous situation for everyone. Lately to prevent that we’ll ride the white line in the middle to prevent jerks from zipping by in the right lane but only if conditions make it safe to do so. We see truckers do this as well.
It’s getting dark. We’re seeing a flaw in our 500 mile plan. We should have left a lot earlier especially when traveling to the east. The sun set time is earlier in the eastern part of the time zone versus later in the western part. Heading north also means an earlier sunset. We were “getting it from all sides.” Overall we had lost about 3 hours of daylight because of late departure, a traffic delay and a gas stop. The rest was from not being able to maintain 70 mph. A few miles/hour really matters when you’re doing long days.
We both wanted to stop. But, we both just wanted to get to the destination. Eventually we made it to Claytor Lake State Park in Dublin Virginia. In the dark which was exactly what we wanted to avoid. Fortunately this stop was a pull through site.
No, Susan isn’t driving 100mph, maybe 20. See the shoulder? Neither do we because it doesn’t exist.
We’re probably not going to try 500 miles again unless it’s absolutely necessary. Certainly not like the bloke in the song who walked 500 miles twice totaling 1,000 miles. We’re quite sure he did “fall down at your door.“
Daily: 490
Return Total: 2.332
Return Overall Miles/Day: 333
Return Driving Miles/Day: 212
Overall Total: 5,468
Total Driving Miles/Day: 342
mpg: 6.3