Day One: 15 August 2010
Milage: 95, 953
Start: Cumberland, Rhode Island
End: Morgantown, West Virginia
States: Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia
The first day of a road trip is always a series of juxtapositions, the excitement of leaving for a new place tempered by the sadness of the one you're leaving. While this is true every time you move on to a new place, driving away with a packed car somehow makes it that much harder. To introduce this particular scenario picture this, two young women, in their twenties, leave the town they grew up in to go to California and live with one of the young women's older brother. This one we shall call Alyssa (because her name is in fact, Alyssa) and she has the brother in California. The other is Liz, who you will note is the author of this blog.
The planned journey starts in Cumberland, RI and ends in Reseda, CA. The proposed distance is just under 4,000 miles with seventeen stops along the way, over 14 days. The vehicle in question is a 2001 silver Nissan Altima containing far too much luggage. The start time approximately 11 AM on a Sunday, with a sendoff crew of notables; friends, family, and one nosy neighbor.
The first day should also be a success, because by default y ou've managed the hard part and have actually left. Note the should be. While one of the longest days driving-wise (around 8 hours) it turned into a frighteningly long day (14 hours) due to monstrous traffic on 81 through Pennsylvania. Picture only traveling 3 miles in an hour and a half (with the gas light on, by the way). Arrival at our first destination right over the Pennsylvania-West Virginia line didn't happen until almost midnight (our projected arrival time had been 8PM).
Fortunately HBO repeated that night's episode of True Blood which we had missed (being somewhere in Maryland at the time). Despite the fact that it was obscenely late, this helped to soften the blow of a 14 hour drive.
