Car Adventures (part 2)

Yesterday I went to the Raleigh-Durham airport to pick up my mother after her trip to Portugal. I was doing fairly well, I thought, right up until I accidentally exited off of the highway exit to Aviation Parkway.

What followed was a confusing mess. I found myself once again in Brier Creek. I had the presence of mind this time around to find a turnaround right away, rather than going off into the sticks out of town.

I got back on the road that led to the airport, and there was this red sports car ahead of me that seemed to be in a hurry I incorrectly assumed they were also heading to the airport, so I followed them.

Unfortunately, they were going to Durham.

Once more I exited off of Aviation Parkway and now I was heading to Durham. Luckily, I noticed a turn-off that was marked Raleigh. This spun me around quite a bit and I ended up in a section of orange cans and traffic cones as construction was underway all over the roadway.

I slowly followed the road signs while this old car behind me kept revving its engine. I thought that they were maybe impatient, but as we rolled up to a stop light I heard their engine stall and stop. The other car managed to start up again and the driver pulled off the roadway. It was a very old car.

Once the light went green I pulled away and left the old beater by the wayside. Following the cones I eventually found myself on a northbound route to Raleigh. Some way down the road there was another exit to Aviation Parkway, which I happily took. This was sort of good but by this point, I had already overshot the airport by a great distance, and I was now traveling south.

At this point, I knew I needed some help. I pulled over to the side of the road and checked my map. For today’s trip, I had the good sense to bring an old phone that had Google Maps on it. It doesn’t have a SIM card, but the GPS worked enough that it could pinpoint my position after a few minutes. It doesn’t work for real-time navigating but I could at least see where I was concerning the airport.

After I got my bearings, I found a street where I could do a U-turn and I got myself headed back north. I was close enough now to the airport that I could see the big black signage indicating the terminals. I had intended on using the Cell Phone Lot at RDU as a waiting area until my mother’s flight had landed. I got lost trying to follow the directions I had written down and I gave up and instead used the parking garage.

Most of the floors were listed as OPEN in green letters on the electronic board, but when I started climbing up the round tower thing, each entrance was blocked with signage saying it was full. I did manage to find a spot on the 4th floor, quite far from the elevators.

Once I had parked, I took some time to breathe and congratulate myself for surviving the trip. The trip back was much easier as I had my knowledgeable mother with me in the car and she knows these streets very well.

While I was at the airport I took some pictures of the planes and the facility.

Questions or comments, put them below. Thanks for reading!