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Just about every Interstate 95 exit has signs promising food-lodging-gas, but not all exits truly deliver convenience Date published: 12/9/2004
Exit 177 C, B and A. What a way to start. This exit looks so confusing and inconvenient I’m chicken to try it. I drive right on by. Exit 176 B (Telegraph Road) and A (Alexandria). Anyone with a lick of sense would skip this exit, so I take it, opting for choice A. Naturally, I can’t get back on. A few U-turns later I find 495 again, just by chance. Exit 174, Eisenhower Ave. It’s industrial, and there’s a self-storage business here. A quick U-turn leads back to the interstate. Exit 173, Van Dorn and Franconia. The exit ramp is a curvy theme park ride. At the light I can see a Comfort Inn to the left, but when I go left I see nothing convenient-looking. It’s not easy to get back on. When I do, a driver in the grip of road rage hugs my bumper and flashes his lights because I can’t immediately get up to 75 mph. Fortunately, I–95 proper peels off to the left, and I get on it. Exit 167, Backlick–Fullerton The busy road I’m dumped on parallels 95, and I pass a little shopping center with a mom-and-pop deli. A left at the light, and it’s back to 95. Exit 163, Lorton. Yeah, there’s coffee to be had here. It’s to the right, not the left, at a shopping center Burger King. There’s a new-looking Shell station, too, plus a motel with a manned Virginia travel info room. Exit 161, Woodbridge. This is the only left exit on Virginia’s stretch of 95, and getting to it from the far right lane is a gut-knotting ordeal. Signs promise many hedonistic pleasures, but to reach them requires a mile-long drive along U.S. 1. Don’t even try to get back on the way you came off. It’s possible, because I did it somehow, but I don’t think I could retrace my route. Just follow U.S. 1 to state route 123 and then follow the 95 signs. Exit 160, Occoquan. Aaaah. Here, at last, we have close convenience, with gas and a KFC within sight of the exit. Exit 158 B and A. It’s a crapshoot, so I pick B. And quickly abandon it, getting back on with a left at the next light. Maybe A is better, but who knows? Not me.
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