The Journey North

Well, we've arrived back in MA about 2 weeks ago. We've been getting settled in at Jim's mom's house.

The journey north was FAR LESS EVENTFUL than the trip down. Honestly, there isn't much to say about it.

We took some time planning our route. On the trip down, there were so many bumps along Rt 40 and 30 through Tennessee and Arkansas that we decided there was absolutely no way we'd ever drive on those roads again. So, to avoid them, we opted to head north first, then east. I was somewhat concerned about tornadoes as we drove through Oklahoma, but we didn't run into any. Another bonus of going this way was that there were toll roads, and from my experience, toll roads have better rest stops. We didn't have any problems finding a place to camp the night, and once we were on Rt. 90 in NY and MA the gas stations were at the rest stops, so we no longer had to get off the highway to get gas. Oh, and we also got to avoid Hartford, CT, which has at least one bridge with a height of 13' 7".



We drove north through Texas, into Oklahoma, then into Missouri on Sunday—about 13 hours of driving. On Monday we drove for 18 hours, through the rest of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and into Ohio. We stopped around 2AM at a rest stop outside of Columbus for the night, then continued from Ohio, through Pennsylvania, New York and into Massachusetts—about 15 hours of driving. I'm amazed we did it in 3 days. The trip from MA to TX took us 5.

The house towed beautifully. I think the weight was distributed more evenly than it had been the previous times we towed it. There was very little bounce, and almost no sway. It was a breeze to tow. We stayed between 55 and 75 MPH most of the way, except for the occasional up-hill mountain that would slow us down when we didn't have enough momentum from the previous down-hill.

There was one little scare on a toll road in Indiana. There were no gas stations, and we were almost out of gas. Then we saw an exit, paid the incredibly expensive toll, then pulled into the gas station as the low-fuel light turned on. Phew. Speaking of gas… I kept track of how much we spent on gas this trip. To be honest, I haven't added it all up yet, but somewhere in NY I counted how many receipts we had (12) and estimated how much it cost to fill up each time ($80) and figured we'd spent around $960 at that point. Then we filled up another 3 times before we got home. So, it cost us over $1000 in gas. Ouch.

We didn't take many photos during our journey, as it rained both Monday and Tuesday, and we were concentrating mostly on just getting home. But here's a little video James took.