I-95 exits don't always deliver

Just about every Interstate 95 exit has signs promising food–lodging–gas, but not all exits truly deliver convenience.

By LAURA MOYER
The Free Lance-Star

Date published: 12/9/2004

Lorton, 9:20 on a Sunday night. Heading south, droopy from playing 51/2 hours of Scrabble with a cutthroat Northern Virginia club, I have a simple wish.

An open McDonald’s, or anyplace where a sustaining cup of coffee can emerge from a drive-through window.

Just before the Lorton exit off Interstate 95, signs promise the roadside trifecta of gas, food, lodging.

But almost as soon as I round the exit’s 20 mph curve, I suspect I’ve been punked.

On the road again
	Reporter Laura Moyer visited dozens of I-95 exits, and all she brought back was this poetic, humorous account. CLICK HERE.

To the right, I see nothing but empty road. To the left are dozens of orange reflective barrels outlining a construction zone. Guessing, I go left.

The only light is from a gas station with a convenience store. I imagine coffee crusting on the bottom of pots that have cooked since dawn.

Web extras • Interactive time line. • Photo slide show • Discuss this series Interstate 95 in the Fredericksburg area opened Dec. 18, 1964. Today begins a three-day series about the highway and the changes it brought to the region. SUNDAY: Those who were there at the beginning recall the building and opening of the interstate and the impact it had on them. MONDAY: The new highway produced new business growth but doomed many stores along the road. Also, find out about life at the exits. TUESDAY: I–95 is now clogged much of the time. Are there solutions to this?

I push on and enter a zone of McMansions under construction on a dark and lonely road.

Feeling eerily untethered from the I–95 lifeline, I abandon my caffeine dreams. I make a left into a subdivision. A U-turn. A right.

It’s two miles back to the interstate.

Suckered again.

Interstate 95 is not a pleasure drive. Its value is that it gets us from point A to point B, as fast as is legally possible—faster if we don’t get caught.

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Date published: 12/9/2004