On Friday night, just south of Ludowici, GA we were stopped by a train. Ohh, its an Amtrak train going north, it’ll be stopping in Denmark, SC soon. Hey, it’s one of the Auto Trains, it won’t be stopping until Lorton, VA. That is what my sunbird cousin uses when she transitions between Maine & Florida. By the time I get my camera out and turned on I almost missed getting a picture.
We started the drive home this morning from Ocala on I-75 with plans to make a little time and get off on to the back roads north of Lake City. Donna was driving and all three lanes were pretty full, so I started map perusing to look for a way off the Interstate earlier. We hated to have to drive thru Gainesville on surface streets, so she gutted it out until north of the home town of the University of Florida.
We have really been racking up the miles on the Miata with this whole Motoring Challenge thing, added another 1200 miles since last Thursday. The Emperor actually went over the 143,000 mile mark yesterday around Groveland, Florida, but I forgot to write about it yesterday. It seems like I forgot to write about when we went over the 142,000 mile mark too, but it probably had to be over the Memorial Day weekend…
Where is it all rainbows, all the time.
We got the Florida sign. I stood there posing for so long waiting on the person standing behind me to leave that my smile turned upside down… We got our ferry ride in between Fort George and Mayport, FL and that photo, but struck out on the pier at Jacksonville Beach.
Today was National Donut Day and we started it we a free one at DD. Today is also the 70th anniversary of the Longest Day, AKA D-Day and we ended it by watching the movie The Longest Day.
This is what the front of yesterday’s washed Miata looks like now. And look at those dead bugs! Any of them would be Big Bug Trophy winners. Where are these things when you need them?
So we slept in this morning, until 5:00AM, and had a nice breakfast at home before hitting the road. First stop was Denmark for an Art Gallery photo. We were in Denmark a couple months ago getting the “City starting with a D”, but ignored this South Carolina landmark because we thought the challenge wanted an Art Museum. Mr. Harrison paints rural scenes of barns with Coca-Cola ads painted on the side and I always wanted to commission one of those with a Miata in it. I’m sure he would laugh at the idea or offer to do it a price that even Warren Buffet would balk at.
From there we captured Olar for the City O, Hampton for the County H and Varnville for the City V. We now need just the Q to complete the City alphabet. Well, all except the X. The closest X town is Xenia, OH which is “only” 575 miles away. There are now only 5 County letters left, with F, K & Y obtainable. There is no X county in the US at all and the closest Z is Zavala County in Texas which is still 350 miles further southwest from Fort Worth where we just barely made it to last week.
We also snagged a vineyard in Ridgeland, SC, a cobblestone road and an island in Savannah, GA from the Destinations Column. This leaves only 12 left on that list and all look doable if only Donna and I can agree on exactly what constitutes a harbor…
If you could get every point available in the challenge you could score 201 points. After today we are halfway there at 100 points. My best guess for our highest possible score is 139 and that is going to take crashing 9 more car shows and a trip to Richmond, Va to a Moss Motors Facility.
Day 10: Columbus, GA to Aiken, SC – 278.7 miles
Not too far out of Sandersville, Georgia we changed drivers at a spot I picked, just so I could take the above snapshot.
Today’s drive was 38.7 miles longer than our pre-drive Google Maps estimate and our total trip mileage was 2894.8 or 390.8 miles more than the 2504 pre-drive estimate. That is an average of almost 40 extra miles each day coming mostly from detours, both of the planned and unplanned variety, the rest from dinner drives and shopping expeditions.
We filled up with gas 11 times on this trip, on average every 246 miles. I pumped an average 8-3/4 gallons each time at an average price of $3.85. The highest price paid per gallon was $4.27 today in rural GA and the lowest price per gallon was $3.50 at a Kroger in Fort Worth, TX last Wednesday. The Emperor averaged 28.1 MPG for the 10 days.
On the Motoring Challenge front, we photographed the car, one of us and that silly poster 46 times. We nabbed 12 Counties or Parishes, 11 Cities, 9 of the “Destinations”, 8 States and 3 national Forests. We also took 3 Sneak Peek photos, only two of which can be submitted.
Day 9: Hammond, LA to Columbus, GA – 444.4 miles*
Today was supposed to be a short drive in case we were going to spend the morning in Hammond, no plans materialized, so we opted to combine Sunday and Monday’s drive into one long Sunday drive. Kind of like a horse returning to its barn, we are accelerating home. We even briefly considered trying to finish the whole thing today by driving the last 250 miles, but decided against it when we realized that we lost an hour when going back to Eastern Time at the Georgia border. We will now get home Monday evening, one day ahead of schedule.
Like yesterday we started the trip on the Interstate to make some decent time and progress on our route diagonally across Alabama from Mobile to Columbus, but could only stand so much, about 2/3rds of the drive, before hitting some 2-lane back road blacktop. We managed to snag 4 more Motoring Challenges, 2 cities; Troy and Union Springs and 2 counties; Bullock and Macon (above.) We will probably try and snag a few more on the way back across Georgia tomorrow, including a National Monument, Ocmulgee, that is near Macon.
Somewhere, while bump, bump, bumping along over I-10’s very annoying 141,000 concrete expansion joints, the Emperor bumped past the 141,000 mile mark.
*Pre-drive Google Maps estimate: 413 (-31.4) – Total miles so far: 2616.1
