Winter travel No. Calif to NC via the South

[fishpondwest]

Planning a cross country trip to visit friends and family. Starting in NO. Calif. ending in Greensboro, NC. Stops in Phoenix and Bryan/College Station, Tx (Go Aggies). Have never driven the route from Tx to Greensboro but imagine we would stay south to Atlanta and then turn left.
Any advice appreciated as we will be leaving California in early December and returning in mid January.

[B_and_D]

We've never been further east than Phoenix by road trip, but if you have time, you might want to check out Death Valley on your way. It's a great place to visit in the winter. I know of a nice campground there, if you're interested, pm me.

There's also a nice, laid-back campground in Desert Hot Springs that you might like to spend a night or two in, it's called Sam's Family Spa http://www.samsfamilyspa.com/index.html. The mineral pools are wonderful, it's really quiet, and very reasonable.

We're hoping to go back down there (to both places!) during winter break, weather permitting.

[wbmiller3]

Have driven Houston to Charlotte NC dozens of times, sometimes with a trailer.

From Houston to Mobile most of I-10 has ridges crossing the lanes every 50 feet or so ?where the rebars connect?. This leads to a bad rocking motion especially with a trailer. Some stretches are under construction to fix this.

In east Texas (Beaumont/Vidor) there is a lot of construction with those awful cement walls right at the white stripes. The Trinity River bridge is no fun and the bridge in Lake Charles La. has a lower speed limit for good reason.

However, the Mississippi bridge in Baton Rouge is fine, unlike some of the scarier ones south of there. Although there is a sharp curve at the west end so you have to slow down and keep an eye on the signs so you don't go to New Orleans by mistake.

There is an ~30 mile elevated stretch through the swamp west of Baton Rouge with slightly lowered speed limits.

From Mobile to Atlanta it is pretty country with a lot of pine trees and hills. You won't see much else except for Montgomery in the middle.

Re: Atlanta, I have tried the loop and shooting right through downtown both many times and have decided the straight shot is best. However, don't even think about it during rush hour. Best to go through on a weekend morning.

The Greenville/Spartanburg area is getting pretty built up (I have been driving this road for 25 years) and trafficky.

Charlotte can be bad at rush hour too. Then you get a little break till the Greensboro/Winston Salem/High Point sprawl.

With no trailer we drive straight through Houston->Charlotte and it takes 15-17 hours (1050 miles). We take two days with the trailer.

One Christmas trip out of the 25 there was a bad winter storm around Mobile with tons of wrecks - I was a horrified eyewitness to some guy in a pickup T-boning a city bus which slid right past a stop sign. The South does not deal well with winter weather - not much equipment for sanding/salting roads etc - so keep an eye on the weather. The Alabama police had the freeways blocked in several places because of all the wrecks and diverted people off. I was really glad to have my GPS then to get me back to the freeway.

This all sounds bad but in my 50-60 trips the great majority have been without incident.

If you have specific questions feel free to send me a PM.

[wbmiller3]

The curve on the Baton Rouge bridge is on the EAST end. I guess editing still doesn't work.

[fishpondwest]

Just a quick thanks for responding to our request. The info about the leg from Houston to Charlotte was especially useful as we have never driven that route before. Keep em coming. D&R.