Avoiding Atlanta
My husband and I are avid RV's and are planning to visit my father in Texas this Christmas. We live in Western North Carolina and make that trip usually by plane but this time we plan to take our new-to-us Newmar, Mountain Aire (38.5' long). Needless to say we wish to avoid the twisty mountain roads that are the shortest route to I20, our preferred route to Daddy. Further, we wish to avoid the insane traffic around Atlanta.
I do most of the driving and am completely comfortable driving our big rig even on narrow roads. I am, however, not happy holding up traffic the way I must to take on the tight turns on the very narrow, windy roads between here and Atlanta. When we look at a map, we can find work-arounds for the worst windy roads but are having no success finding a work-around for Atlanta. Even at 3:00 a.m. driving inside the ring road around Atlanta is confusing and a traffic nightmare. We don't live in Atlanta so don't know ways to stay outside that ring road and off windy roads with our big rig.
If we drive to Atlanta in our car, we come down 276 to route 11 connecting with I85 at the NC/SC state line. That road is passable for our RV but slowing to safely make those tight turns will back traffic up for miles. To avoid doing that, I will opt to take 64 west through Cashiers and use that route to intersect with route 11. It is windy but not as bad as the other route.
Any one who can make some suggestions about that, let me know. We plan to leave on the 20th if we can find a work around. If not, we will try to hit Atlanta at 3:00 a.m. that same morning. That is not the best choice for us as neither of us do well driving at night. We can drive to a campground near Atlanta the day before, wait for the wee hours of the morning to arrive before we enter the traffic pattern around Atlanta and then catch up on our sleep once we get past it. We would rather not do this as it loses us a full day with my Dad as we'll have to do it going and coming and must be back here by the Monday following Christmas.
Suggestions? Advice?
I do most of the driving and am completely comfortable driving our big rig even on narrow roads. I am, however, not happy holding up traffic the way I must to take on the tight turns on the very narrow, windy roads between here and Atlanta. When we look at a map, we can find work-arounds for the worst windy roads but are having no success finding a work-around for Atlanta. Even at 3:00 a.m. driving inside the ring road around Atlanta is confusing and a traffic nightmare. We don't live in Atlanta so don't know ways to stay outside that ring road and off windy roads with our big rig.
If we drive to Atlanta in our car, we come down 276 to route 11 connecting with I85 at the NC/SC state line. That road is passable for our RV but slowing to safely make those tight turns will back traffic up for miles. To avoid doing that, I will opt to take 64 west through Cashiers and use that route to intersect with route 11. It is windy but not as bad as the other route.
Any one who can make some suggestions about that, let me know. We plan to leave on the 20th if we can find a work around. If not, we will try to hit Atlanta at 3:00 a.m. that same morning. That is not the best choice for us as neither of us do well driving at night. We can drive to a campground near Atlanta the day before, wait for the wee hours of the morning to arrive before we enter the traffic pattern around Atlanta and then catch up on our sleep once we get past it. We would rather not do this as it loses us a full day with my Dad as we'll have to do it going and coming and must be back here by the Monday following Christmas.
Suggestions? Advice?
