A day on the road

We drove home to Arkansas today, which amounts to a full day’s work – a little more than 7 hours of driving plus time spent refueling, eating, going to the restroom and various other non-driving stuff, like checking the oil.

The top photo was shot this morning somewhere on I-74 between Danville, Ill., and Champaign with me driving, listening to my iPod and Maria snoozing.

I don’t recall what time we left, but we got home a few minutes after 5 p.m. CST. I noticed the Garmin GPS switch over to night mode, signaling sunset, at 4:50 p.m. That’s just too damned early for sunset and it will only get worse until the solstice in a week or so.

We stopped for lunch at Culver’s in Effingham, Ill., where Maria shot this photo of me waiting for our food to show up at the table.

We kept a watchful eye out for cops on I-57 near Cairo, Ill., and weren’t disappointed when we spotted a pair of police cars sitting in the media at Mile Marker 8.

We stopped again at Boomland for a restroom break and to check the oil (it was fine).

As far as the numbers go, we drove a total of 1,416 miles and spent a total of 26 hours 27 minutes in motion with a top speed of 78 mph and an average moving speed of 53.5 mph. It occurred to me somewhere in southern Illinois that you know you’re getting older and more mature when you swap your radar detector for a GPS unit.

The dogs, Pete especially, were overjoyed to see us. Pete makes little pig noises when he’s excited and happy and he was unusually vocal as he rubbed up against me like a cat. I love that Aussie.