Hi All,

Would rather have been flying...

Due to a scheduled delivery of apartment furniture to Norfolk, via the Richards' family van lines, we had to drive for our holiday visits this year.  We totalled 30 hours in the minivan to drive Burlington, VT to DC (to collect a daughter), on to Norfolk, back to DC, and back home again.  Total fuel used was 120 gals of 87.  This was via the "inland route" since we wanted to actually get there and thus stayed off 95 except for the DC to Richmond segment where we were promptly slowed to a crawl for 75 miles.  An alternate routing to totally avoid 95 on the way back put us through more of the VA countryside on secondary roads for a savings of about 1/2 hour.

5LP makes the BTV - CPK run in 3 hours so I figure we would have flown this same holiday itinerary in about 7 hours including time for approaches at HEF, CPK and HEF on the way back.  Fuel use would have been about 110 gals of 100LL and travel time saved of 23 hours.  Maybe most importantly, we would have been safely in the hands of our great U.S. air traffic control system instead of being forced off the road by a road-weary trucker in PA... yes, in fact, we were forced into the median by a trucker who either didn't see us or just didn't care.

Happy Holidays,

Jim and Martine