It’s been a while since we’ve taken a trip. We had the opportunity to take one, and for reasons that will become clear, driving the van was the best way to do so. We took a week to visit my parents in New Hampshire. Don’t worry, all is well with them. This wasn’t an emergency run, unlike some of our trips to see Melissa’s family in Texas.
All that remains of the van’s interior build is the bed, the upper shelves, and the box around the batteries and electrical system, so it’s more of a portable hotel room than a home on wheels at this point. But I threw my Alpicool fridge back in, made sure it still worked, and set it to be one big refrigerator instead of a fridge/freezer. That way, we’d have cold food and drinks for the drive. I also tested the diesel heater, because while it’s still summer weather at home, temperatures are getting down near freezing up north.
At 4:00 AM on Saturday, we hit the road. We drove across northern Arkansas, much of which I had never seen. Actually, I still haven’t seen much of it, because it was dark for the first few hours of the drive. I’ve been spoiled enough by the great headlights on my V-Strom and Melissa’s 4Runner that I have renewed appreciation for how poor my van’s headlights are, so I was relieved when the sun finally came up.
We crossed into southeast Missouri, and immediately the roads began to rise and fall over seemingly endless sharp crests. I had to slow down a lot over these crests, since they were so sharp I couldn’t see what was on the other side, and didn’t want to charge over them at the 55 mph speed limit.
A slight detour off the optimum route was in order. For just a bit over an hour and a few miles more, we had the opportunity to pass through northwest Kentucky, a state that neither Melissa nor I had ever visited. It was one of the last four states in the lower 48 I hadn’t visited. After crossing a couple of very narrow bridges, we entered Kentucky, and that number is down to three. (Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, if you’re interested). The fields were pretty, though they looked a lot like the parts of Missouri we’d just left.
Our route took us straight through Louisville, where my dad lived for many years while he was growing up.
This is also where we encountered the worst traffic of our entire trip to New Hampshire, between construction and congestion, even on a Saturday afternoon. But we fought our way to I-71, which got quiet and scenic as we left the city.
Crossing the state line into Cincinnati, Ohio (no, we didn’t visit WKRP) put us into more nasty traffic, which we endured. At least we didn’t have to change roads, just follow I-71. It got nice again for a while, then we hit even more traffic through Columbus. By now, we’d been on the road for so long that we were just over the traffic.
It got dark once again, which was when I learned that Melissa doesn’t really like driving long distances after dark. Despite that, she drove us the rest of the way to Cracker Barrel in Mansfield, Ohio. We arrived around 8:00 PM, more than two hours later than Google Maps had told us. We’d lost an hour with the time change to the Eastern time zone, and we’d made a couple of brief gas and bathroom stops, but even with traffic delays, that didn’t account for nearly as much time as we’d lost. We had no idea why. We’d been driving the speed limit, yet Google was wildly inaccurate. I would’ve planned things differently if I’d known how wrong Google’s timing was going to be.
We settled into Cracker Barrel among several other camper vans, then went inside for dinner. Naturally, we got a slow waitress, right when we were already grumpy, hungry, and overtired. It also seems their entire menu has changed in the two years or so since we last traveled. But we found things we liked, ordered, and ate eventually. We returned to the van and were so tired that we just went straight to sleep. I didn’t even get any pictures while we were there.
We got up again at 4:00 AM. The gas station next to Cracker Barrel, which I’d read was open 24 hours, turned out not to be. So we resumed our route and found gas a bit down the highway, as well as coffee. The I-271 bypass around Cleveland had no traffic, but part of it was so bumpy that Melissa couldn’t get back to sleep. It smoothed out eventually, and cruise control got a good workout as the sun came up on I-90. Melissa slept almost all the way through the thin slice of Pennsylvania we drove through, but woke up soon enough to see us cross into New York. The sunrise was beautiful, but I was driving, so I didn’t get any pictures.
Rather than taking the NY Thruway, we decided to take I-86 to I-88 across the state. This was the free route, and I couldn’t even figure out what our tolls to stay on I-90 would’ve been. I do know they would’ve been more than a car, because they charge more for vehicles over 7 feet, 6 inches tall, which we are. It was quite foggy at first, but as the sun came up the fog burned off, revealing the beautiful landscape of upstate New York.
Melissa took over for most of the drive across New York, leaving me free to relax and enjoy the scenery. The trees started changing colors the farther east we went. It was a beautiful drive without the traffic of Ohio’s cities, all the way to Albany, the state capital. I took over driving here, since we were leaving the interstate for smaller roads that I remember quite well, and so Melissa could focus on sightseeing and leaf-peeping. We followed Route 7 all the way to Bennington, then hopped on Route 9 to cross southern Vermont.
I surprised Melissa with a stop at Hogback Mountain, which Route 9 passes over. When I lived in New England, Route 9 across Vermont was part of one of my regular motorcycle day trip loops, and I always stopped here to admire the scenery. With the foliage near peak colors, it was better than ever, and I’m glad I got to share that with her. Come to find out that one of Melissa’s dreams, long before I even knew her, was to see the fall foliage in New England. I’m glad I could be her tour guide.
Unfortunately, I forgot to make sure I had some Smokey Da Van stickers on board before we left, so I couldn’t leave my mark at Hogback Mountain. But I did have some Lister stickers, so I left one among the countless others all along the guardrail. Let me know if you can find it.
From there, I figured out the bypass around Brattleboro, crossed into New Hampshire, and threaded our way across Keene. It was weird heading out Routes 9 and 202 to the northeast, because I used to live to the southeast and was used to taking Route 119 that way.
The trip up 9 and 202 was quite familiar, though, and I had no problem getting us to I-93 in Concord. The last hour or so up I-93 was easy, and before long, I was backing up my parents’ driveway in Meredith. We spent the rest of the night catching up, then caught up on some sleep as well. We slept in the following morning, too, because we could.
We covered about 1,600 miles in just two days. Cannonballing like this is not how I prefer to travel. However, I only have so much time I can take off work, and we wanted to maximize how much time we spent with my parents, as well as a couple of side quests we wanted to take while we were in the area. Splitting the trip into three days each way would have left us only three days with them. This way, we have five days before blasting back to Arkansas.
