Looking back over the last several years, more often than not I'm heading South as part of this annual adventure a day early to avoid some unfriendly weather. I used to NEVER do this! Is the weather getting worse? Am I getting more cautious? I usually end up doing this in a way that the only cost is that of an extra hotel room; I could also say that I usually do this and have to spend the additional cost of a hotel room on an already expensive trip. I do suppose that the few 10's of dollars the hotel rooms costs is much less than a vehicle in the ditch or a lost day of hunting.
It was unusual weather, as between getting up in the morning and daylight, the temperature dropped over 20 degrees.
So after getting up at my normal time and working from home for several hours, I was out the door by late morning. I can't say I'm terribly thrilled with my job right now, but having this kind of flexibility is quite ducky. I need to constantly remind myself of how life is good. I do feel a bit bad for SO having to deal with a winter storm at home. Hopefully it won't be too bad. I also hope I have banked some good karma - while walking the dog a few days ago, I saw a fat fox squirrel trapped in a raccoon leg trap. I let him out - he seemed quite pissed off and chattered at me from a tree.
I may be being overly cautious and with the forecast, I could even have made an argument that waiting until morning might have made more sense. One of the best things about being an adult is no one tells you what to do. One of the more difficult things about being an adult is that no one tells you what to do...
Things above ground were just starting to ice up when I left. Due to really warm temperatures for the previous few days, the ground was warm enough that nothing was sticking.
So I headed south. It was raining as I left and this continued for almost the whole day. The only thing that really changed was how much it was raining. Temperatures started near freezing and wavered up and down while climbing slightly as I headed south.
After I got off the interstate on US25e, I must have crossed the frontal boundary as almost instantly, the temperature jumped almost 20 degrees. Both the inside and the outside of the truck fogged up pretty quickly, until temperature and humidity equalized.
Heading through the mountains, traffic was heavier than I've usually seen at first. But eventually, it thinned out as I headed southeast. I normally like this part of the drive, but in rainy, cloudy weather it wasn't anything special. I did remark to myself at one point that it was nice to be headed out without any real time pressures.
I was listening to The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston. It was a fascinating account of the history of the Lost City of the Monkey God - or White City - in unexplored Honduras. It tells the true story of using LIDAR to find and map unknown ancient cities in the jungle, and their subsequent exploration on foot. It was a fascinating read/listen.
I pulled into Veterans Overlook so that I could make a plan for how far I wanted to go. I decided I didn't like the hotel I had previously chosen, and I wasn't really ready to stop yet. So I looked ahead a bit and found a Sleep Inn outside of Asheville, NC. This should make the rest of the drive an easy day assuming roads don't freeze up overnight.
The hotel looked nice enough although it was a wet walk down to road for food. I had been sitting in the truck for several hours so I didn't mind the walk, but it was still very wet and my shoes have some holes in them.
Dinner was a calorically intense Hardee's before calling it a day.
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