Christmas Miles 157 through 455: Wilmington, DE

Our Christmas Day drive to Wilmington was an exciting and stressful one.  The weather was horrible.  There was freezing rain and wind so violent that I was actually afraid that the car might blow over.  Dave was driving, and even in the passenger sheet, I could feel the effects of the wind on the car, and I saw how much he had to struggle to control it just to keep it on the road.

On top of that, the fog was denser than I've seen.  On the Pennsylvania Turnpike, there are mile markers every 1/10th of a mile.  In addition to that, there are 5 mini-mile markers between each 1/10th mile marker (so, basically a marker every 2/100ths of a mile - 105.6 feet, according to Dave.)  As we passed one 2/100ths of a mile marker, we could not see the next one - that's how foggy it was.  There was a car about 4/100ths of a mile ahead of us, and we never saw it unless the driver tapped the breaks.  We were going 35 mph at some points and it was awful.

Fortunately though, there was very little traffic on the turnpike and literally no congestion.  We still made decent time - less than 6 hours total, including rest stops, and arrived at Dave's mom's house by 5:30 p.m.

We had a few drinks, played a ping-pong tournament (Dave and I were both eliminated in the first round) and then opened gifts. 


A thoughtful look on the face of the elder Hartman


Are those canned goods that I received?  Why yes! They are!

I set up our air mattress in a little room off of the living room, since it was a full house.  Unfortunately, it had been raining all day, and when we went to bed, we learned that the roof was leaking right next to our bed.  We put a bucket with a towel underneath it but I was still going crazy from the noise, so we were forced to move the air mattress into the living room, which is always sad for me, since it means that we're the last ones to go to sleep and the first ones to have to wake up.  Needless to say, neither Dave nor I got a good night's sleep that night and it sort of left us at a deficit for the rest of the trip. 

But either way, Christmas Day was over and we had more driving to do the next day!

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