Sunday, December 31, 2017

Cruzin the Pacific

Highway that is. Cruising, well mostly.

Decided to hit the road before the end of the year as there were just too many people, holidaymakers and out-of-towners everywhere. But mostly it's the jetskis and tinnies zooming about on the waterways taking little or no care when in and around swimmers and paddles that got me going. So I'll leave it to them.

The Pacific Highway upgrade is getting there. Mostly duel lane north and south all the way to Ballina and beyond. Bit of a bottleneck as always as 4 lanes become 3 then 2 on the Gold Coast but not a bad run to the NSW border. But lots of work yet to be completed around Woodburn on the banks of the Richmond River has created a significant bottleneck for the northbound traffic. It would seem all the completed new sections north and south of Coffs Harbour and including the new bridge at Macksville has shifted the Macksville Crawl to the Woodburn. When I came past, north bounders were banked back for more than 20kms. But heading south, overall it's been pretty much point and shot with the cruise control doing most of the work.

Not much to see and nowhere to stop on these new sections, bypassing just about everything. It's like in one end and pop out the other after gliding over gently swerving and undulating landscape. Makes for good travel time and fuel economy compared to previous experiences, especially during construction, with all the stop-goes and go-slows and a road that was not being maintained because of the pending bypass/upgrade.

Stopping at my usual haunts, back of pubs or free camps with river views. So yeah, just cruzin'.

Ignore GPS?

New Motorway open... Yeah!!!