Veronica’s sister got married and the wedding was in North Carolina which is like 72 states away from Massachusetts. We weighed the options for getting there;
We’ve flown to the area for conventions and it’s hard to find a direct flight, airports and airlines are requiring masks and I was not a fan of wearing a mask for 12 hours while driving would mean sixteen hours on the road. The benefit was that her aunt and uncle, of whom I am a big fan, live halfway between here and there and they have a full on apartment above their garage for visiting relatives so a chance to catch up, have an amazing meal and a place to stay all made driving the winning choice.
A huge mega plus was that #3 son just bought a brand spankin’ new car with so many fancy safety devices that it nearly drives itself, he was gracious enough to offer it for the trip and I gladly accepted handing him the keys to my convertible for the weekend.
The ride down we split into two eight hour days, some of the stops along the way for food, gas and the like were interesting. We opted to avoid I-95 all together because we’ve had some bad experiences with it so we went inland and came through Scranton Pennsylvania, the setting for THE OFFICE and even swung through Cooper’s Seafood which is a prominent location on the show.
The visit with the aunt and uncle was a high point, and because they’re Italian food like a Thanksgiving Day meal was the order of the day. We replotted the remainder of the trip to avoid some additional trouble areas and made excellent time checking in at our hotel ahead of schedule and grabbing dinner with more aunts and uncles who were in town for the wedding.
The wedding day itself went off nicely and everyone had a good time. Our original plan was to hit the road around 9PM to drive back a few hours to reduce the amount of time on the road on Monday but we’d already paid for the nights hotel in North Carolina and we opted to hit the sack and leave in the morning.
Because we had to get back for the dog and a live ask-me anything interview we had scheduled for Rose City Comic Con we ended up driving sixteen hours straight on Monday— that was tough but we broke the Waze trip down into smaller segments so rather than watching a brutal countdown we set it up so we’d have two hour jaunts which would time nicely with fuel stops and bathroom breaks.
I’ll say this, there are some interesting gas stations in Virginia and some beautiful country side and mountains through all those southern states.