We rose early this morning - 3 AM, had a quick bite to eat, loaded the car and got on the road at 4. Our idea was to get through New York City before the traffic got bad. Unfortunately we got slowed down a bit with the thick fog all along I-95. There was quite a bit of truck traffic too as we got closer to the George Washington bridge and it started to rain. At one point, we saw a sign that said 12 minutes to the bridge. After 20 minutes, we began to see signs for La Guardia and finally signs for the Long Island Expressway and I know something had gone wrong. Somehow with the fog, the rain and the monster trucks all around us we got off of 95. We managed to turn around and get back on the right path, but that error cost us about 45 minutes. Oh well, we did eventually get over the bridge and onto the Jersey Turnpike. Our trip through Delaware and Maryland were uneventful. We also skirted around Washington DC with no problems. We had three slow downs above Richmond however. One was just a volume slow down, one was an accident off on the shoulder. After that things were going smoothly for quite a while, but at one point I noticed that there was no traffic moving in the northbound lanes. We did see one lone car, but then no others. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone - very eerie. We couldn't imagine what was going on until Russ mentioned that there must be an accident on the northbound lanes and the traffic was not allowed to pass. The hold up in our lanes was due to rubberneckers. We eventually passed the scene of the multi-car accident and the north-bound traffic was stopped for several miles. We finally got below Richmond and were happy to stop for the afternoon in Emporia VA. The whole day had been foggy, rainy or both so we were happy that the weather in Emporia was just overcast. The rooms were not ready for us so we took a ride to explore the downtown area. We got through our car tour of the town quickly as there wasn't much there so we turned around and had to stop the car so I could take a pic of the Senior Citizen Inn (first two pics) - quite the place, but so happy we were booked into the Hampton Inn! We started to take a walk down by the river, but it started to rain and we left downtown Emporia with its two pawnshops and not much else to speak of (except for the Senior Citizen Inn). The last picture is the "peanut love sign" (last pic) that welcomes you to the town. We loaded up the baggage carrier and took the elevator to the second floor of the hotel and our bad luck was still holding: the elevator malfunctioned and we were stuck inside! We had to press the panic button several times before we were connected to the front desk and someone came to let us out. The rooms were lovely and Dave took a short nap before we went out to dinner at the only viable option: Shoney's. We would have done take out, but there was hardly anyone inside and there was no one on the glassed in porch which is where we sat. We got back and had an early night.
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