Gas

Since the early 80's whenever I would travel in the Southeast, Atlanta had the lowest prices for gas. Now that I live in Atlanta this is no longer true. If I go south on I-75 gas is cheaper in Macon, I don't have to go too far north on I-75 and gas is cheaper. If I go west on I-20 it's cheaper in Alabama and if I go north on I-85 it's cheaper in South Carolina. Last weekend we went to Huntsville and saw again that as soon as we crossed into Alabama the price went down.

The trip was interesting in several ways. After we got into Alabama, we saw that we had plenty of time to get to Huntsville and we decided to swing by the Unclaimed Baggage place in Scottsboro, AL. On the way up I-59 we had a blowout. I was passing a car when I heard a funny noise. I stepped on it and got past the car and the noise was still there and it was feeling like I had a flat tire. By the time I got stopped on the shoulder the tire was totally shot. I have never had a tire blow that badly. One side of the tire opened up all the way around the tire along the edge of the tread. The only thing that made this tire change better than the last flat I got with the truck is that this time it wasn't pouring rain. The last time I had to wait for over a half-hour for the rain to let up enough for me to feel like getting out to change the tire.

We stopped for lunch at a Taco Bell in Scottsboro, AL. Now in the past I've had the experience of stopping at fast food places and having to wait a long time for my food compared to the rest of the country. This was the first time that they forgot to fill our order. After seeing people who ordered after us getting their food, including a guy that got multiple bags of food to go like if he was getting food for a large crew of people, the Old Lady went up to the counter and asked what happened to our order and that's when she found out that they forgot to do our order. To make up for this we got two free Apple-Cinnamon Empanadas but they forgot the Cinnamon Twists that we had ordered.

After lunch we went to the Unclaimed Baggage place. There was a lot of stuff for sale there, cameras and electronics and sports equipment some of which makes you wonder what all people bring on airplanes. Mostly tho it was clothes and if I'm going to buy other people's used clothes I'll go to a thrift store.

The rest of the trip to Huntsville was uneventful, coming back was a different story because of a lack of signage. We decided to check out the Little River Canyon park because it was more or less on the way back to Atlanta. The first sign we saw for the park was a sign with an arrow pointing across the road to the parking lot right after crossing a bridge. Then to follow the scenic road along the river and canyon, we had to go back across the bridge and take the first left. After playing tourist along the river we came out of the park and came to a t-intersection with an arrow pointing left and right. Not one sign to let you know what road it was. After driving for 15 or 20 miles south we came to another t-intersection and finally found out what road we were on as there was a sign indicating it was the end of the road and what the number of it was.