Winter Wanderings 2012 - Day #25 - 2/20

Today's leg, under mostly sunny skies was right around 500 miles so I am sitting in Nashville with the trip odometer at 2268.5 and right around 250 miles to go to be back home, an easy leg for a change.  This was simply a day of driving with just two hiccups.  The first was way up north in Alabama where they have completely closed I-65 northbound so we were routed a solid 15 minutes due east where, of all things, they just had a 4-way stop to get the long stream of traffic turned left on to a northwest road back up to what I assume was the next interchange back on to the Interstate.  One would have thought they could do better than that!  The overall delay was around 40 minutes, making me even more glad I wasn't trying for a marathon one-day drive home.

Zipping through Birmingham at 75 mph brought the adrenaline up a bit as well as the concentration, and since I hit Nashville ("road construction ahead") right at rush hour my final 6 minutes of Portia time to destination was suddenly expanded by almost 15 more.  I was very glad to reach the motel.

There were two bright spots today.  My "last supper" on the road this trip, at the desk clerk's recommendation of "nearby" (like two miles) and easy to find was eaten at a Longhorn Steakhouse, a nice salad, a loaded baked potato, and a 7 oz. medium rare filet steak to absolutely die for!

The other was to find, when I logged on this evening, an email from Jean with some pictures including these two, one of me in my "office" at their home (the same room from which we stripped the wallpaper) and the other just seconds before I climbed aboard, after all the goodbyes had been said, to head for Alabama.