Updated on April 23, 2022
Day 10/11 of 2019 Florida Spring Break, Driving back to Washington DC
The last two days of my Florida spring break trip, I would be driving back from Jacksonville. Despite I spent the majority of these two days on the road, which weren’t the most interesting material, I still made make this post, mostly of dashcam photos, so that the entire journey was whole here.
I knew some friends that lived in Durham, North Carolina, which would constitute a small detour. Knowing it’s not possible for me to drive from Jacksonville to Washington DC in a day, I paid them a visit to spend the night.
Google Maps indicated it would be 7 hours of nonstop driving from Jacksonville to Durham, so I left my overnight Airbnb, situated in a quiet residential neighborhood at 9am in the morning.
Interstate 95As I was passing Savannah into South Carolina, there was some traffic on the northbound direction of I95.
![]()
Interstate 95There was an accident on southbound direction of I95, which caused miles of traffic backup. I thought the minor slowdown on my northbound direction was caused by drivers slowing down to spectate the accident, resulting in a phantom traffic jam.
Since this was a public post, the fun time with my friends won’t be part of it.
Fast forward to March 24, since it wasn’t that much a long journey from Durham to Washington DC, I got up reasonably late, said goodbye to my friends, and left for home at noon.
Interstate 85Some roadwork was the only source of slowdown on Interstate 85. Weirdly, I thought the part of road that these cones blocked off was perfectly fine?
Interstate 95Traffic was building up passing Richmond. Looking at this, maybe the I295 detour I took on my way to Florida was a blessing in disguise?
![]()
Passing Downtown RichmondInterstate 95 passed right through downtown Richmond, which accounted for this increased traffic.
Interstate 95There was heavy traffic on the northbound direction of I95 leading away from Richmond. I tried taking naps in a nearby truck stop to wait it out, to no avail. So I decided to turn off the interstate, and took the country route of VA301 instead.
![]()
Route 301Before passing Bowling Green, Route 301 was a two-lane road with few traffic, lined with soaring trees and farmland.
![]()
Route 301Probably since it’s gaining latitude, there were fewer and fewer leaves on trees as I approached Maryland.
![]()
Interstate 495Home stretch. Sunday afternoon rush hour traffic around Washington DC, which wasn’t too bad.
That’s the end of my 11-day, 2881-mile roadtrip. Lots of fond memories. Distance-wise, I don’t think it’s a record that I will break easily.
END
Day 10/11 of 2019 Florida Spring Break, Driving back to Washington DC by Huang's Site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.