East Coast Trip Days 1 & 2

Day 1,
We are finally off on our trip. One year of planning, two months of preparation and a few headaches along the way. I will try to go into further detail later on the preparation issues, but suffice to say it was all worth it.

Wall-E, Dug and Ellie anxiously waiting to go on an adventure.

We finally departed Peoria at 9am. We decided to start the sightseeing once we arrived in New Orleans. Our goal is to spend a few days each in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. Then head to Florida for a week or two hitting Disney World, Cape Canaveral, Pensacola and the Florida Keys (looking forward to an airboat ride in the everglades).

 

We drove about 450 miles today and stopped for the night in a nice rest stop just east of El Paso Texas.

 

Day2,

Today we drove about 400 miles as we decided to try and get a spot at a rest stop before 6pm. It seems that after 6pm most all the spots for long vehicles are full of commercial truckers. We found a wonderful spot in a very nice rest stop about 30 miles east of Ozona Texas. The Highway 10 route across Texas is fairly flat and straight. The scenery has some rolling hills but mostly flat scrub brush cattle grazing land. Not the most scenic route.

The one good thing that Texas did was raise the freeway speed limit to 80mph Yeeeehaaaw. Of course we kept it about 75 to conserve fuel. We actually got about 7.5mpg. I know that doesn't sound like much but our old Pace Arrow only got 6.5mpg no matter how we drove.

80mph, full speed ahead!

With the speed limit at 80mph, it was a little weird to see big diesel rigs passing us at 80+. We did see quite a few cars pulled over getting tickets.

 

We stopped to get gas and found a Walmart that sells gas, who knew. I went inside to pay for the gas and get a couple of bottle diet cokes, when the cashier (a very sweet older lady) told me "you know, if you buy the 20 ounce cans of diet coke, you get the same amount and its 69 cents cheaper". I told  her that my wife sent me in for two bottles of coke and that if I came out with cans, she would make me come back in a get bottles. We both got a good laugh.