Myrtle Beach Trip: THE DRIVE

Saturday Aug 3

Departure: 5:10am (CST)

Arrival: 1:30am (EST)

Total Driving Time: 19 hours, 20 minutes

Total Driving Time according to Google Map: 17 hours 24 minutes

Reason for huge time discrepancy: Kentucky

After leaving Iowa We took I-74 into Peoria for a while and then headed south towards Memphis on I-57 all the way down Illinois, it was all fairly smooth sailing until we turned onto I-24 towards Nashville and entered the Lost State of Kentucky. 

Kentucky has lost a lot of things apparently, it’s road construction crews for one thing, turn signals were another thing - people just cut across three lanes of traffic and veer in and out of traffic so they can get to that off-ramp doing 70mph, NOT that we did 70 very often in Kentucky. No, instead, we did about 30. 

Unless we were completely stopped. 

We spent a lot of time just SITTING in Kentucky, 

Not because construction crews were busy working, not because there was a flagger or some legitimate reason to be stopped on the interstate.

No, we were stopped because there were orange cones.

Nothing was happening with the orange cones. 

They were just there. 

Hanging out. 

Randomly stealing a lane from traffic and making an entire state of people who’ve lost the ability to use a turn signal, merge. 

We picked up speed once we passed into Tennesee and took I-40 to Knoxville and then into North Carolina where we picked up I-26 to Columbia and then scooted across South Carolina on 51.

South Carolina we’ve learned, is a very DARK state. There are no street lights on the highways. 

NONE

That moon on the state flag apparently means you have to drive by the light of it, because you never get to use your brights (too much oncoming traffic) and the ONLY illumination you get are your headlights. Rick and I had to take turns because we both felt we were going blind squinting into the darkness to look for turns we knew had to be there but couldn’t see ahead of time. 

But, finally, we reached Myrtle Beach.

Papa had long since gone to bed but left the door open and the light on for us. 

We took showers (because something about being in the car that long just makes you feel GREASY) and crashed.