Back Home In Virgnia

Three long days on the road bring us back to our home in Virginia. The drive from Little Rock happened faster than planned but as we all know, the best laid plans...................
The weather was beautiful while we were in Little Rock but prior to our arrival there had been massive amounts of rain in the area and and also upstream in all of the surrounding states to the north and west. The area around Little Rock had almost ten inches of rain. We got to watch the Arkansas river rise over a period of four days. By Sunday when we left Arkansas, there was a huge flood in progress, particularly along the White River. Fortunately for us, Interstate 40 was built well above the flood plain so we weren't personally affected. By the time we arrived in Nashville, TN temperatures were dropping. Monday morning brought snow which we drove in all day. The snow finally stopped well past Bristol, VA. We thought we were going to spend a few days at Claytor Lake on the way home but found there was no water in the camp ground due to damage sustained as a result of freezing weather. We decided to travel on toward home rather than deal with the water issues.

As we all know, prices at the pump have started to seem awfully high. The worst (highest) diesel price we paid since leaving home in December was $4.15 per gallon in northern AZ. You can only imagine the concern our credit card company feels when we fill our 100 gallon tank. Feeling the squeeze, Mann decided to see what could be done to improve the situation. The first step was to slow down believing this would likely improve fuel mileage. Given that we were already one of the slowest vehicles on the road, we weren't sure how this slow down would be perceived by others. The good news is that only a few people are honking and we're getting record high fuel mileage now thanks to reduced speed (about 60 on the interstate). We're up to over 9 mpg. This may not sound like much but will represent a savings of over a thousand dollars a year in fuel cost. We're thinking of slowing down some more. Is it legal to drive 55 on interstates?