Thursday, October 22, 2015

afternoon of Oct 17 and Oct 18. Visit with Jack and Sue Keene near Richmond, VA.

Drove from Montreal to Albany, N.Y.  Little to see, but pretty trees along the highway.

31 degrees when we left Albany at 7:30 a.m..  Traffic was terrible for a Sunday, or was it because of it, or is it always this way?  Slow way down and even stop on the turnpike time and time again, for n apparent reason.

Drove through NY, NJ, Del., Md, and Va.

NY and NJ have large "service centers" along the highways that have a gas station separate and a building with nice restrooms, 3-4 fast food restaurants, and a convenience store.  Some were named after Revolutionary era famous women.

Saw beautiful trees all day and 4 deer together.  Another Six Flags park-have seen several on our trip.  Old 3 story houses in NJ and nearby large loft complexes with units for sale.  2 high cranes with flags flying from them.

Drove across a tiny area of Del. into Md.  Crossed a huge bridge with toll booth at the end.  We asked the attendant what the names of the 2 towns on either end of the bridge were and he answered "I don't know".  Hmm.  Well, maybe he comes in from some other direction.  We spent $22 in tolls today, mostly for interstate highways.  Not that we like it, but it seems unfair that people out here pay to drive on interstates when people in most states don't.  I know there are 2 highways around Denver now with tolls.

A memory of the NJ turnpike:  One winter in the 1970's we drove from Washington, D.C. to Iowa and Minnesota for Christmas.  We left Minneapolis and saw several accidents before we got out of town.  The kids were 4,2,1.  When we got near the turnpike, traffic was re-routed because it was closed because so many semis had jackknifed and they needed to be cleared.  We had heavy coats, snacks and plenty of blankets, so Tom took off to find milk for Jacque's bottle.  McDonald's had run out of food, but still had milk.  He said he wanted to stay on the access ramp to the highway overnight instead of staying in a shelter, so that's what we did.  He started the heater several times.  The next year we took the train and it snowed all most all the way there and back!

Drove through a long tunnel under the Baltimore harbor.

Silver alert message flashing on elevated highway signs.  I googled it and it said 36 states now have the system where they announce a missing senior citizen.  This message described the car and license plate.

This is tobacco country-cigarettes are $3.50-4.25 instead of 7.50 as in so many states.

Passed the Quantico Marine base and the National Marine Museum.  It's being added onto so they have more recent Marine history displayed.

Arrived at Jack and Sue's.  Tom and Jack served together in the Security Police at three bases during their careers.  We hadn't seen him for 19 years and had never met Sue.  Two evenings and a day of nice visit, old storied, old pictures.  I caught a cold and wasn't up to par, but we had a good time and promises to get together in far fewer years.

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