2018 Adler San Diego Road Trip

Starting mileage:  8239 Starting time: 8:30 am Ending mileage: 8579 Ending time: 2:30 pm Travel mileage:  340 Travel time: 6:00 hours Our final leg home! Gas prices in PA are substantially higher, $2.95/gallon, compared with $2.49 - $2.59 most of the way from Texas to Virginia. Coming into Pennsylvania were real signs that fall is here, with many trees starting to show the yellow, orange and red foliage. We finally got home at 2:30 in the afternoon, 8,579 miles after we started out a month ago on Sept 3. Day 31 route

Starting mileage:  7561  Starting time: 7:30 am Ending mileage: 8239 Ending time: 5:00 pm Travel mileage:  678 Travel time: 9:30 hours (lost another hour due to time change) Soon after leaving Gadsden, the terrain changed significantly, becoming hilly and mountainous as we entered the Appalachian mountains and the area around Smokey Mtn National Park. It didn't rain all day but we did have precipitation that varied from misting to torrential downpours where we could barely see the road. It was pretty stressful driving in the pouring rain. At one point in the late afternoon we saw a rainbow. Many of the trees had bare or nearly bare limbs but we don't know why. It looked like it was from some insects that had chewed the leaves off. Day 30 map Smokey Mountains

Starting mileage:  7053 Starting time: 8:30 am Ending mileage: 7561 Ending time: 5:00 pm Travel mileage:  508 Travel time: 8:30 hours We decided to head home directly from Lafayette so today and the next two days will just be travel days. In this part of the country Fox & Friends seems to be the preferred TV channel in the mornings. It is interesting to see how the "other side" thinks. This is certainly the Trump TV channel. When we were leaving Texas and entering Louisiana, the trees were Live Oak with Spanish Moss and then pine trees of some sort. Coming into Mississippi, there was a wider variety of trees that I couldn't identify although there were Magnolias in the highway median. We got 445 miles on our last tank of gas which is the most we've gotten. Our mileage has improved to 30-31 mpg which is a big improvement from the 25-26 mpg that we were getting going across South Dakota. Driving at 70-75 instead of 80+ must make a big difference. We deci

Starting mileage:  6799 Starting time: 9:30 am Ending mileage: 7053 Ending time: 6:00 pm Travel mileage:  254 Travel time: 8:30 hours Today was mostly visiting the Space Center Houston which has many exhibits about the US space program, both past and future plans. There are a number of rockets on display, including the largest, a Saturn V for the Apollo moon program.  It was also interesting to see a Space Shuttle on top of the Boeing 747 that was used to move it across the US from a landing site back to Cape Kennedy. This approach was proposed by a NASA engineer who was a model plane enthusiast and created and tested a model 747 with a Space Shuttle on top.  It is easy to see why Houston had such a problem with flooding during last year's hurricane with so much rain. It is absolutely flat with many houses just a few feet above lakes and bays. There is no place for the water to go quickly. Houston is a mix of pleasant residential areas and huge industrial areas with oil r