Chicago, New York, Detroit and it's all on the same street./ Your typical city involved in a typical daydream/ Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.
-- Truckin', Grateful Dead*
The most interesting part of my day was definitely the truck stop I accidentally wound up at.
When you're driving major roads in New Jersey, and most of the northeast, it's easy to figure out where to stop and eat: at the rest stops on the roadways. It's not great food, but you don't need to get off the thoroughfare. (Italy also has these; they call them Autogrills, and you can get both decent food and wine there).
In other states, you just need to look at the signs and figure out what you'd like. They list the restaurants and gas stations at the nearest exit. In this case, it was getting up to lunch time, I'd just gotten onto I-95, and the only restaurants around seemed to be McDonalds and a fast food place called Bojangles we don't have up north. I was tempted to try it, but wasn't really in the mood for fried chicken.
Then I saw a sign for five or six restaurants. I took that exit, and it turned out to be a truck stop area. There was a parking area for cars as well, so I went in. (It turned out that most of the restaurants were still under construction or renovation, so I wound up with fast food anyway.)
I've talked to truckers, and knew about the stops, but don't believe I've ever been in one before. A lot of it makes sense for people who are on the road a lot, like the pay showers near the bathrooms. They also sell a lot of things you'd want if you were spending a lot of time on the road. There are auto supplies, convenience-store foods, underwear, paperbacks, books on audio, and DVDs (they were advertised as discount DVDs, but I thought the price was average).
There was also, for some reason, a lot of Christian kitsch. One of the t-shirts they sold had the orange and brown pattern of a chocolate-peanut butter candy, but had put the word "Jesus" instead of Reese's. Another had a picture of the world on fire, and said something like "Get ready for global warming," followed by some bible verse. I assume it's connected to burning in hell somehow.
I'd have taken some pictures, but it seemed a bit rude to do that indoors. This photo was taken just as I left. I'd have tried for a better angle, but it was about to rain.
Two other notes about today's journey.
1) Apparently very few people go from the Outer Banks to Georgia, or at least few take the route I do. There was one period when I didn't see a single car on the roads I was on for over half an hour. This was by the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, which is a rather scenic area, even though I saw neither gator nor bear, which signs told me to look out for.
2) I'm staying at the Oglethorpe Inn in Savannah, and so far highly recommend it. The lobby is beautiful, and the rooms are spacious.
And, on a bookkeeping note, I've changed the options for commenting on this site, since several people said they had trouble leaving messages.
* (I had to look up the lyrics for that quote. I don't think I've ever listened to more than the first two lines before.)
The most interesting part of my day was definitely the truck stop I accidentally wound up at.
When you're driving major roads in New Jersey, and most of the northeast, it's easy to figure out where to stop and eat: at the rest stops on the roadways. It's not great food, but you don't need to get off the thoroughfare. (Italy also has these; they call them Autogrills, and you can get both decent food and wine there).
In other states, you just need to look at the signs and figure out what you'd like. They list the restaurants and gas stations at the nearest exit. In this case, it was getting up to lunch time, I'd just gotten onto I-95, and the only restaurants around seemed to be McDonalds and a fast food place called Bojangles we don't have up north. I was tempted to try it, but wasn't really in the mood for fried chicken.
Then I saw a sign for five or six restaurants. I took that exit, and it turned out to be a truck stop area. There was a parking area for cars as well, so I went in. (It turned out that most of the restaurants were still under construction or renovation, so I wound up with fast food anyway.)
I've talked to truckers, and knew about the stops, but don't believe I've ever been in one before. A lot of it makes sense for people who are on the road a lot, like the pay showers near the bathrooms. They also sell a lot of things you'd want if you were spending a lot of time on the road. There are auto supplies, convenience-store foods, underwear, paperbacks, books on audio, and DVDs (they were advertised as discount DVDs, but I thought the price was average).
There was also, for some reason, a lot of Christian kitsch. One of the t-shirts they sold had the orange and brown pattern of a chocolate-peanut butter candy, but had put the word "Jesus" instead of Reese's. Another had a picture of the world on fire, and said something like "Get ready for global warming," followed by some bible verse. I assume it's connected to burning in hell somehow.
I'd have taken some pictures, but it seemed a bit rude to do that indoors. This photo was taken just as I left. I'd have tried for a better angle, but it was about to rain.
Two other notes about today's journey.
1) Apparently very few people go from the Outer Banks to Georgia, or at least few take the route I do. There was one period when I didn't see a single car on the roads I was on for over half an hour. This was by the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, which is a rather scenic area, even though I saw neither gator nor bear, which signs told me to look out for.
2) I'm staying at the Oglethorpe Inn in Savannah, and so far highly recommend it. The lobby is beautiful, and the rooms are spacious.
And, on a bookkeeping note, I've changed the options for commenting on this site, since several people said they had trouble leaving messages.
* (I had to look up the lyrics for that quote. I don't think I've ever listened to more than the first two lines before.)
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