Musings on a road trip in an old classic
I am John Griffin, a member of the Minuteman Chapter and owner of a 1964 Buick Skylark Convertible (yes, the My Cousin Vinny car, but not green 😉).
I have always been interested in taking a long road trip with my wife in ‘Gracie’, but until recently the car wasn’t reliable enough to handle more than ‘around town’ driving. Happily, that is no longer the case. I was fairly confident that we could make a long trip without issues. I wanted to go across the country, but my wife suggested a more modest adventure first. We decided to go to South Carolina to visit some friends to retired there 10 years ago.
Rather than take all interstates, we wanted to enjoy the scenery along the way. To that end, we chose to travel on Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge parkway on the way south and along the coast on the return leg. Here is a map of our route.
As you can see, it’s almost 2,000 miles long and we planned a week for the trip. We stopped three nights on the way down, two nights with our friends and two nights on the return journey.
Skyline Drive and the Luray Caverns were wonderful. We had the top down that day, and it was comfortably warm. Luray cavern also has a museum attached with lots of pre-war vehicles.
The Blue Ridge Parkway starts right where the Skyline Drive ends. It’s a slightly less curvy road (45 MPH as opposed to 35 on Skyline drive) and it’s much longer. More lovely scenery and hills to drive over.
The rest of the journey to our friend’s house was just normal highways. I maintained a 60MPH make speed on the highways although the speed limit was 70 in many areas. I sensed some frustration from other drivers from time to time, but mostly experienced no hostility. One driver did beep at me as he passed, then pulled in front of me and then slowed down quickly but that was it. I wished him a ‘blessed day’ and continued on our way… lol.
One the way back, we stopped at DRS Automotive (aka Fantom Works), Kitty Hawk NC and the NASA Wallops Island facility. All three are well worth visiting.
We had planned on spending a Tuesday night in NJ before going through NYC, the traffic wasn’t, and we decided to just push through until we got home. The trip was a huge success from my standpoint. We drove comfortably and the car had no mechanical issues at all. Being a good little paranoid, I did bring oil, coolant and transmission fluid but didn’t need any of it. If you are considering a long trip in your classic, my advice is GO AHEAD. Although gas wasn’t cheap, we averaged over 16 MPG. Well worth it!