Exit 126 onto Route 1 from Interstate 95 is an exit with many conveniences for drivers, from restaurants to gas stations, making it busy and crowded during certain hours of the day. View More Images from this story Visit the Photo Place

View the Spotsylvania County community page

177 miles

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

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.

Follow us on

Date published: 12/9/2004