Hi,
Wife and I are taking a Road Trip near Christmas to visit her parents. We're traveling from South Bend, IN (North Central Indiana) to Orlando, FL. My wife is afraid of flying so we are doing this by car.
Both of us really hate heavy traffic situations and crazy drivers. My wife used to live in Atlanta before we where married and she and my dad (a Truck Driver) have told me that the drivers in Atlanta are highly crazy and very aggressive drivers. (No offense to anyone living in Atlanta).
My own limited experience there agree's with this as once ended up having to do an unplanned lay-over in Atlanta on a flight and the ride between the hotel and the airport has to count for the scariest moments of my life inside of a car. The driver was crazy and breaking 100 mph (Thats just something you don't do in Indiana, people who do that go to jail.) and the worst thing is that he wasn't even the craziest driver on the road.
According to MapQuest estimates I can go around Atlanta by following I-65 to Montgomery, AL, then taking a non-interstate highway for about 2 hours to I-10 and that route would take about an hour total of extra driving time.
Objective is mostly to get there to Celibrate Christmas, but it looks like we arn't going to be pushing too hard to make the best time and giving ourselves plenty of time for the route. (2 full days with a planned hotel stop to sleep inbetween)
Two questions are.
1. Do you think its worth it to go around Atlanta? At the schedule if we went through Atlanta we could probably go through there late at night, which may make it significantly easier.
2. How confident do you feel about MapQuest's driving time estimates?