Holiday Inn Charlotte NC

Another long day behind the wheel.  Yesterday, it was Customs that stole an hour from us, today, it was heavy rain, and heavy fog.

For some unexplained reason, the drive lane beside you always moves faster than the lane you are in. Until you change lanes that is... The scientific process repeats this many times until a firm conclusion can be written and published. I repeat the process many times because I hope that the traffic will move faster, unfortunately, I keep forgetting that hope is not a method, it's more like wishing, but I digress.

The traffic this year seems much heavier than in past years. This year we left on a Saturday, I think all the other snowbirds did too. I had hoped that travelling on the weekend would have avoided the rush hours and the shipping trucks. See, I did it again, hope is not a method.

All day we drove through the tall mountains of Pennsylvania to the rolling hills of Virginia and North Carolina. Some of the scenery looked great with fog banks over the valleys, unfortunately, as we climbed higher, the fog clouds hugged the ground and driving slowed significantly. The great part of the drive was the warming temperatures, the day started at 14ºC and it is now 24ºC

Modern cars have gas gauges, a display of how many Kilometres are left, and a caution light that tells you to gas up. Normal people would have. 

I did all the calculations, the gauge was on the pin, the caution light was glowing brightly, and I had about 40km left in the tank. Our planned exit should have gas, and fit within the numbers. Logical? Of course, but the exit did not have gas, none, nada, zilch, rien. The GPS said that there was a gas station in about 9.4 miles and it was on our planned route, so we set that as our destination.

Good gas, good price, and enough gas left to drive another 3km. Easy Peasy.
That fuel tank was about as dry as it can get. Total cost of gas for fill-up? $37.07 US$

It is now looking that our 24 hour drive will be much closer to 30 hours, so we are not likely to make it all the way tomorrow, so arrival during daylight wins.