Long Day

I just drove 350 miles, round trip, for a two and a half hour meeting. While this may seem odd in light of four dollar gas and all, it was a good meeting and we were kicking off a project where I believe it was important to have "face time".

When we have to travel this far, it is cheaper to rent a car than drive our own and get the federal mileage rate, so I got to tool around Ohio in this spry little Dodge Caliber. This is where renting is kind of fun, as you get to test drive various vehicles.
The Caliber was a responsive little booger but I thought the road noise was a bit loud. This one had the requisite (for me) CD player and it got a lot of use. The sound system was average; not great. I did not calculate gas mileage but it seemed to do pretty well. I think I bought 12 gallons of gas and drove almost 360 miles, so that would be about 30 miles (a lot of highway) per gallon.

I was in McConellsville, down in southeast, "Appalachian" Ohio. It is a cool little town on the Muskingum River, and while it is the county seat and largest town in Morgan County, is has fewer than 2,000 residents. Yet there are two grocery stores (the locals say two and a half by virtue of some convenience store) and a movie theater showing first run flicks right in the middle of this building, which is also City Hall:
I drove down using the boring Interstates that I already know, then followed SR 60 south of Zanesville, following the Muskingum. But driving back, I followed one of my key rules: If there is more than one way to get somewhere, don't you DARE return the same way you came.

So I took State Route 78 east. It is a squiggly thing with lots of signs that look like this:
It traversed a large portion of the territory that was strip mined years ago. This is a view of the lay of the land from an actual miners' memorial park along 78.
Farther east you get into older forested areas like this:
Then I hit I-77 and traveled north, marveling at two things. First, the clouds. They were mesmerizing...
Second, this family cruised past me in this immaculate, clean, cream puff of an Oldsmobile station wagon that reminded me totally of Big Red, our very similar if not identical wagon that took us to the Pacific Ocean and back in 1998, three of the best weeks of my life.
I really like to drive, so a day like this does not bother me, aside from the price at the pump, for which I get reimbursed. The great weather helped, and I got home by a respectable 7:00.
Plus, along the way, I saw and was able to photograph a great Weird Object. But that will have to wait for tomorrow...