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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.

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177 miles

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


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.


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Date published: 12/9/2004