We left New Market, VA around 8:30 AM. The traffic got kind of heavy on I-81 & I-77 through Virginia, but we were able to stay with-in 5 MPH of the speed limit. It was pretty much the same when we first entered North Carolina, then somewhere around Statesville, which is about 40 miles from Charlotte we entered a road work zone that extended to Charlotte. Sometimes the traffic would move along at 45-50 MPH, but it frequently became stop & go. Once we got about 10 miles beyond Charlotte, the traffic opened up again and we were doing well the rest of the way on I-77 through Columbia, SC and for most of the way we were on I-26. We passed a sign that said I-95 24 miles 50-55 minutes. Since we were in the lightest traffic we had been in all day, we assumed there was an error on the sign. We came to a point where the traffic was at a complete stop. Ernie glanced at the GPS device which stated we had more than 8.5 miles to the I-95 on ramp. The traffic, in both lanes, was stop & go the rest of the way to I-95, it took us almost an hour to go the remaining 8.5 miles. Once on I-95 the traffic was really heavy but we were able to average 45 MPH most of the way to the exit we were taking to the motel where we would spend the night. A few miles from the exit we again hit stop & go traffic. Where we got on I-95 to the exit was about 38 miles, it took us a good hour to travel that distance.

The next morning when we got back on I-95 the traffic was normal and we started out making good time. We traveled about 19 miles when we came upon stop & go traffic again. About two miles further along was an exit for US-17, Ernie had checked directions avoiding highways the night before noticing that the early part of the directions were several turns that eventually lead to US-17. We took the exit and reset the GPS device to avoid highways. We did well traveling the US & State highways until we hit heavy traffic in Gainesville, FL. When we were approaching I-75 we could see the traffic was moving freely, so we decided to go back to using interstate highways. When we got to Ocala there was heavy traffic on the lanes to take exits, but the travel lanes were moving OK. Near the southern end of Ocala we came upon stop & go traffic. We were in stop & go traffic from there to about ½ mile before the exit to the Florida's Turnpike, a distance of about 25 miles had taken us about 2.5 hours. From there to about 2 miles before exit we were to take the traffic was reasonable. The last two miles took about 10 minutes.

Last updated:   apr 20 2019