EP 12 Day Two / Road Trip to Colorado

Larry's Sorta Fun Stories

Day Two: Birmingham to Tulsa

We are on a pilgrimage to move my youngest son from Eustis, Florida to Golden Colorado. We spent all day on Saturday packing the twenty-foot U-Haul truck and we hit the road on Sunday. My son and I would be driving the truck and his wife, and her father would be following us in another car.

The U-Haul truck was also pulling one of my son’s cars and we were dragging along at a pace of 8.5 miles per gallon of gas. And as we were the Alabama boarder, we detected that we needed gas and we spotted a LOVES gas station and pulled of the interstate and proceed to find that all the gas pumps nasals were covered, and they didn’t have any gas at that station. So, we had to get back on the road and luckily the next exit had a gas station and gas.

Since my son and I had decided that we would switch drivers where we got gas, it was my turn at piloting the U-Haul heading towards Birmingham. I got the truck up to a good cruising speed of seventy miles an hour and turned to my son and asked him where the cruise control switch was on the steering wheel. He commonly said, “it’s under your right foot.”

We completed our first day’s journey to Birmingham, Alabama and called it a night.

Day two started off okay. We knew that was going to be the longest leg of the trip and we had to go north to get to Interstate 40 by going to Memphis, Tennessee. We were on Interstate 22 and US 78 heading north and as we got closer to Memphis, we started seeing big warning signs that said the Interstate 40 Bridge was out of service and we would have to find an alternative route.

As we got into the southeastern side of Memphis Interstate 22 suddenly just became US 78. The road became very rough and riding in the U-Haul was like riding on a wooden roller coaster. On our right side was one of the largest train/truck loading depots I had ever seen. It was the Intermodal Cartage Depot of Memphis with very large cranes unloading shipping containers from railroad cars onto hundreds of semitrailers waiting to hauled out onto the rough highway.

Being the first time I had ever been in Memphis, Tennessee I had to Google our location and to see where Elvis’s Graceland was. I was evenly miles out of our way and the way road and traffic was, there was now way this 20’ U-Haul and car pulling trailer were going eleven miles out of way. Sorry Elvis, next time.

The road that was supposed to be an interstate road kept getting rougher and rougher. We kept moving north looking for the alternative route to cross the Mississippi River. At last, we understood that we were going to have to get on Interstate 55 to cross the river and then go north to intersect with Interstate 40 West.

Understandably old Interstate 55 was very congested with all kinds of trucks and cars that were wanting to be on Interstate 40 as well as just heading west on Interstate 55. The traffic was congested that we were moving at a snail’s pace. So, my son Josh hopped onto a Google map and found back roads to get us up to and onto the old Interstate 55 bridge.

As I was questioning what he was going to do, we exited at Exit Seven, meaning we were seven miles to the bridge. But we were on old side roads that paralleled the interstate. This was an old industrial area. made a U-turn because that was the wrong road and then crossed some railroad tracks. The last turn was up a road that had a sign that read NO TRUCKS. That didn’t stop Josh. As we climbed the hill, I noticed picnic tables and park benches. I thought this was not going to be good. As we turned a corner there was the National Metal Museum. We didn’t have time to explores the museum, but we did see it.

Two more turns and we were at the very old Exit Number One on Interstate 55 at the very foot of the bridge. There wa

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