We made it home. We saw the sun rise in Indiana as we were getting ready to take off and drove into the typical Michigan gray. We made a couple stops at our usual grocery stores in Shipshewana and then made for home, arriving early afternoon. Then it was a scramble to empty the RV and winterize as it will be below freezing tonight.
The completed loop is pictured below
That route represents 3564 miles and three weeks of travel.
So I’ll sign off for now and say: Until next time...
Cold morning, got down to 28 degrees. Gotta get used to the cold all over again. It’s supposed get down to 16 tonight. And it feels like it. Now that the engine has cooled, the afterburners no longer work, and the temperature is dropping fast. We’ll probably use quite a bit of propane and battery power keeping the tanks from freezing and us from freezing tonight.
We got an early start and managed to put some miles behind us, making good progress unlike yesterday. We broke up the monotony of interstate driving by stopping at Mammoth Cave National Park, arriving fairly early and early enough to take in the first run of one of the cave tours. The Domes and Dripstones Tour is one of the more popular ones and one of the few offered early on a Sunday morning in the Winter. 734 steps from a sinkhole, going over 200 feet underground, going through domes and caverns and a dripstone section known as the Frozen Niagara. I would say not as breathtakingly beautiful as, say, the Carlsbad Caverns, but it was a memorable and fun trip and, again, a welcome diversion from the Interstate.
We’re now in a Cracker Barrel parking lot south of Fort Wayne, Indiana. We set ourselves up for a visit to Shipshewana tomorrow, kind of a tradition when returning from a road trip.
413 Miles covered today
Beautiful morning when we got up. I’m sure the water was just as clear and the sand was just as white as yesterday, but we must now turn toward home.
In keeping with Eastern Time, we were up early and were out of the campground by just after 7am local time. The GPS said we could be home by about 11pm if we just drove and never stopped. It’s tempting to just get it all over with but then reality says it will be a lot longer than that because of fuel, food, and rest stops and simply because we don’t drive the posted speed limit.
And it’s a good thing we didn’t try because we didn’t come even close to making the progress we expected. Traffic on I-65 through nearly the entire state of Alabama was very heavy. And there were numerous slowdowns and accidents. The first accident was a semi truck that apparently drifted into the median, plowed through the cable guard rail, and came to rest in the southbound lanes of the freeway. The southbound lanes were completely closed at the next interchange, stopping traffic for miles. It slowed the northbound traffic for quite a while also.
The next slowdown we could see for a couple miles as we crested a hill. The GPS suggested exiting and taking an alternate route. So I did. And about 50,000 other cars did, too. Now we have a two-mile line of traffic waiting at a stop sign.
These and other slowdowns (many for no apparent reason) probably delayed us a good three hours. Uggh. We found a note in a journal a couple of years ago that said this route had hardly any traffic on it and we made good time. Well, not this time.
We stopped for the night at a Cracker Barrel just south of Nashville. It’s considerably colder here, 43 degrees, heading down to 31, so the afterburners are on and tomorrow we’ll have to break out the heavier clothing again. Gotta get used to the cold all over again.
441 miles covered today. The GPS suggests that this will take just under seven hours. It took us about 12.
This is the route so far. We are at the checkered dot in the middle of Tennessee.
