The road more traveled

Wilson, NC –After leaving Pennsylvania this morning, we have crossed Maryland and Virginia and are now in North Carolina, so we’ve hit four states in one day, but if it had been any other day but today, perhaps that would have happened a bit faster.

When we left Ottawa yesterday we were congratulating ourselves for picking a nice, peaceful Sunday to drive the Interstate 81, and thereby avoiding the heavy crush of transport trucks that use this major artery through the week. We thought the same thing this morning when we realized it’s Martin Luther King Day, so the roads would not be carrying their normal Monday traffic. It certainly looked that way when we started out, anyway.

When we crossed the Mason-Dixon line – which is almost the same thing as the state line between Pennsylvania and Maryland – we stopped at the Welcome Center for a break and to pick up some travel literature. The gentleman who served us was asking about our destination, and when we told him we’d be taking the ring road around Washington DC and Richmond, Virginia, he pulled out a fuzzy photocopy of a map with a bright orange highlighted route, well west of those two cities, through more rural sections. That route would get us just as surely to our destination, he explained, with a deke here and a switch there and no freeways.

It was all very appealing, but the clarity and dependability of our GPS lady, ever willing to ‘recalculate’ if we should take a wrong turn, won the day, especially in contrast to a photocopied sheet with dubious instructions. Besides, it was a holiday so traffic would be light, right…..?

WRONG. Every Washingtonian in the entire capitol city was heading back home on the ring roads just when we reached them. From a height of land we could see a huge long string of cars ahead – and a few transport trucks thrown in for good measure --  crawling who knows where at five miles per hour ENDLESSLY. Aaargh!

When we were finally able to drive the speed limit, our relief was palpable, but short, because almost as soon as we left the Washington traffic behind, we got snarled in the Richmond traffic with the same crawling snakes of cars, three lanes wide! Okay. End of rant.

As soon as we were able to get off the freeway, we found a Cracker Barrel restaurant where we enjoyed a delicious lunch of catfish and greens, with a side of warm cornbread and biscuits. We love their homey atmosphere with rocking chairs and checkerboards on the porch outside and a roaring, crackling fire in the hearth inside, plus lots of good home cooking. Caleb, our server, told us there are often lineups of people willing to wait 45 minutes for a table – and today’s busy crowd was not at all unusual. We managed to resist the wedges of apple pie and slabs of chocolate cake that could have capped off our meal…but only just.

The sun was a golden ball on the horizon when we finally reached our turn-off at Wilson and found our hotel. To our delight, just across the way was a Cracker Barrel restaurant, so we did a repeat visit! Yum!