Acworth, GA to Benton, IL

We didn't have as many miles to drive today, so we slept in a little this morning and ate breakfast at the motel. After packing the car and checking out (the room cost $96.64), we were on the road at 9:20 and heading north on I-75. 

About 30 minutes after leaving Acworth, we saw that the southbound traffic on I-75 was backed up for miles

I remember thinking how lucky we were that it was on the other side since we had been stuck yesterday with traffic backed up for miles.

Traffic was flowing along nicely on I-75 today until we were about 7 south of Dalton, GA. We had just passed the southern exit to Dalton when traffic came
to a complete halt. Unlike yesterday when we were able to get off of I-75 and detour around most of the traffic backup, we were STUCK. It took us 1 hour and 20 minutes to travel the 7 miles up to the next exit on I-75. Hum - remember me thinking earlier this morning about how lucky we were that the southbound traffic was backed up and we weren't? Careful what you wish for!

Once we got to the Dalton exit, traffic started moving again and we were on our way. We stopped at a BP station at East Ridge, TN around noon to get gas and paid $1.869 a gallon. Since we had had a late breakfast, we bought a couple of snacks to hold us over until we got to my cousin's house.

At Chattanooga we got onto I-24 and headed north through Tennessee. Not too long after leaving Chattanooga, we ran into another traffic delay at Monteagle, but that only took us 20 minutes to drive 3 miles. We stopped at a McDonald's north of Nashville to get some coffee. We continued on I-24 to Kentucky and then into Illinois and got on I-57 north up to Benton and then out to my cousins Frances and Jack's house and arrived there at 5:30. 

We drove 436 miles today and we would have arrived earlier if it hadn't been for the traffic tie-ups we where in today. 

It is so good to see Frances and Jack and as usual Frances had fixed a great meal for us - an Italian pot roast in the crock pot with some home grown vegetables. What a welcome meal after traveling all day and being stuck in traffic. The temperatures here are supposed to start cooling down beginning tomorrow.