{"id":15453,"date":"2014-10-12T12:31:57","date_gmt":"2014-10-12T17:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=15453"},"modified":"2022-05-11T17:45:14","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T22:45:14","slug":"81-on-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/81-on-81\/","title":{"rendered":"81 on 81"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m planning a quick trip down to southwestern Virginia and neighboring West Virginia. Naturally I intend to count some new counties<\/a> along the way although with other purposes too. I wish I could say it was entirely about the counties so I could finally finish Virginia. But that will have to wait for another day<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being true to my nature, I’ll completely over-prepare with multiple maps, both electronic and paper, even though I’ve driven the vast preponderance of the route multiple times and understand it intuitively. I’ll have lat\/long coordinates prerecorded in my GPS, turn-by-turn directions printed from my preferred map website, and a battered dogeared Triple-A road atlas as a backup should a solar flare destroy every navigational satellite and should an asteroid bust the car window and suck the printouts from the dashboard. Nobody will be getting lost. No way, no how. Logic has no bearing here. Preparations will be ridiculous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patterns often appear on 12MC and another one emerged as I plotted waypoints. Most of the path involved Interstate 81, the primary route along the western diagonal of Virginia (map<\/a>). Many of those waypoints fell awfully close to longitude 81 West. This type of reasoning often leads me to trouble. Was there a place, I wondered, where 81 West crossed Interstate 81? It seemed like it would offer a nice bit of numerical symmetry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Golden Spots<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In fact a golden spot existed at 36.938110\u00b0,-81.000000\u00b0<\/a>, just a stone’s throw from the Wilco Hess Truck Stop – Wytheville. Or the Flying J. Or Galewinds Go Carts & Mini Golf although apparently it’s closed now<\/a> so scratch that suggestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UPDATE<\/strong>: I visited this golden spot<\/a> in October 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Were there other Primary (e.g., one or two-digit) Interstate Highways equally blessed with similar golden spots? Why yes there were. Longtime readers already knew that I’d have to map them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n