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So this week was the second major road trip I've taken and the longest I've done yet. The only other long trip I've driven was two months ago up to Utica, but that was still in New York and not many weird things happened. It was me, my friend, sister and her friend in one car while my parents took another one. We stopped over-night in a motel just north of Richmond to lessen the driving load. I did all the driving. This is pretty much "New York Boy Meets Southern Comfort". Here's my conclusion...
1: Hardee's Burgers are the best ever. There was a thread here a while ago about which place had the best burgers and I said Checkers was the best. I had never been to a Hardee's until last Saturday and they are by far the best!
2: If you're looking for a McDonald's, don't go down I-95 in North Carolina. That's how we found the Hardee's. There's got to be a fifty mile stretch starting about five miles past the VA-NC border where there was no McDonalds. Eventually we gave in to hunger and decided to try Hardees.
3: There are too many roads listed as State Routes in Virginia and North Carolina. Probably because I have a strange curiosity for roads and county/state routes but the one thing about Long Island is that we have about 15 state routes and I'm going down the interstate and every other road is listed as State Route One Thousand and Something. Very odd.
4: There is a difference between Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach. We left Richmond on the way down and I put the address for the resort into my GPS. The address given was for Myrtle Beach but the hotel was in NORTH Myrtle Beach. So when we got to the place the GPS told me to go, everyone was like "where the fuck is it?". So after some angry phone calls from my parents wondering where we were, we realized that we were a town off.
The thing is that North MB and MB, the streets are listed the same. There's an Ocean Boulevard where all the hotels are and streets 1-85 in both towns! So frustrating. And the traffic on US17 is so slow it took us a half hour to get from Myrtle Beach to North Myrtle Beach.
5: Whatever the fuck Wayport Network is, never connect to it. That's the wi-fi we had in the resort and it was so slow I would have been better off snail-mailing letters to Norm or Regent!
I got to experience the back roads of North Carolina, including one town called Lumberton, which has got to be the middle of nowhere. The exit off I-95 the GPS listed apparently didn't exist... or I missed it, but I think it's the prior. So I decided to take local roads from just north of the NC-SC border to Myrtle Beach. Very odd roads. I went from doing 70 to slowing down for passing through Main Street for the village of Middle of Nowheresville. I had to pass a tractor doing 30 mph in a 55 on NC SR 41 by passing him on a two lane dotted-yellow road! We actually went back the same way and stopped at some McDonalds in Lumberton and were very surprised to come across civilization in an otherwise farmland. Norm, Solo, please tell me Greensboro isn't like this! If it is, I ain't never coming down! :D
Regent, my sister also came to the conclusion that people in South Carolina can't drive. She and her friend went to Wilmington to visit her friend's grandma and she got pissed off that a Bimmer was doing 50 in a 65. The only thing I found odd was people who stopped in the middle of the intersection at a red light actually backed up behind the line... and that people behind that car backed up so that the first car could back up! That and the guy who was riding in the "pick-up" part of a pick-up truck... that usually doesn't happen here!
Other highlights include traffic on I-95 in Baltimore and D.C. during rush hour, traffic heading toward Richmond during rush hour, seeing not one but two people stop their car in the middle of rush hour traffic to switch drivers in their car (friend got a pic with one car door open), trying to pick up WCBS-AM to listen to Yankee games 700 miles away from the station (the station was staticky but came in). Last night we had dinner with my dad's friend from high school who lives in Richmond. I hadn't seen them since we visited them 14 years ago and they have a 15 old son and a daughter that's 18 and grew up nicely... unfortunately I already was told that none of my friends would be willing to travel to Richmond to visit her with me so that got shot down quickly :D
All in all, a very good trip.
1: Hardee's Burgers are the best ever. There was a thread here a while ago about which place had the best burgers and I said Checkers was the best. I had never been to a Hardee's until last Saturday and they are by far the best!
2: If you're looking for a McDonald's, don't go down I-95 in North Carolina. That's how we found the Hardee's. There's got to be a fifty mile stretch starting about five miles past the VA-NC border where there was no McDonalds. Eventually we gave in to hunger and decided to try Hardees.
3: There are too many roads listed as State Routes in Virginia and North Carolina. Probably because I have a strange curiosity for roads and county/state routes but the one thing about Long Island is that we have about 15 state routes and I'm going down the interstate and every other road is listed as State Route One Thousand and Something. Very odd.
4: There is a difference between Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach. We left Richmond on the way down and I put the address for the resort into my GPS. The address given was for Myrtle Beach but the hotel was in NORTH Myrtle Beach. So when we got to the place the GPS told me to go, everyone was like "where the fuck is it?". So after some angry phone calls from my parents wondering where we were, we realized that we were a town off.
The thing is that North MB and MB, the streets are listed the same. There's an Ocean Boulevard where all the hotels are and streets 1-85 in both towns! So frustrating. And the traffic on US17 is so slow it took us a half hour to get from Myrtle Beach to North Myrtle Beach.
5: Whatever the fuck Wayport Network is, never connect to it. That's the wi-fi we had in the resort and it was so slow I would have been better off snail-mailing letters to Norm or Regent!
I got to experience the back roads of North Carolina, including one town called Lumberton, which has got to be the middle of nowhere. The exit off I-95 the GPS listed apparently didn't exist... or I missed it, but I think it's the prior. So I decided to take local roads from just north of the NC-SC border to Myrtle Beach. Very odd roads. I went from doing 70 to slowing down for passing through Main Street for the village of Middle of Nowheresville. I had to pass a tractor doing 30 mph in a 55 on NC SR 41 by passing him on a two lane dotted-yellow road! We actually went back the same way and stopped at some McDonalds in Lumberton and were very surprised to come across civilization in an otherwise farmland. Norm, Solo, please tell me Greensboro isn't like this! If it is, I ain't never coming down! :D
Regent, my sister also came to the conclusion that people in South Carolina can't drive. She and her friend went to Wilmington to visit her friend's grandma and she got pissed off that a Bimmer was doing 50 in a 65. The only thing I found odd was people who stopped in the middle of the intersection at a red light actually backed up behind the line... and that people behind that car backed up so that the first car could back up! That and the guy who was riding in the "pick-up" part of a pick-up truck... that usually doesn't happen here!
Other highlights include traffic on I-95 in Baltimore and D.C. during rush hour, traffic heading toward Richmond during rush hour, seeing not one but two people stop their car in the middle of rush hour traffic to switch drivers in their car (friend got a pic with one car door open), trying to pick up WCBS-AM to listen to Yankee games 700 miles away from the station (the station was staticky but came in). Last night we had dinner with my dad's friend from high school who lives in Richmond. I hadn't seen them since we visited them 14 years ago and they have a 15 old son and a daughter that's 18 and grew up nicely... unfortunately I already was told that none of my friends would be willing to travel to Richmond to visit her with me so that got shot down quickly :D
All in all, a very good trip.
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