I recently was reminded of a trip my family and I took that found us far from home in the Appalachian Mountains and stranded in a late-season blizzard. I had forgotten that my wife had kept a mini-journal recording an hour-by-hour record of our ordeal, but I ran across her notes, written on three pages of 2 3/4 x 3 15/16-inch graph paper.
We had left our home in Pennsylvania at 3:30 a.m. on April 2, 1987, heading to a conference in South Carolina. Thirteen hours later, we arrived after an uneventful trip. Little did we know that our little trip would soon prove to be quite eventful.
We arose a little later than normal the next morning and went to a restaurant not far from our motel for a late breakfast. Upon our return to the motel, the desk clerk informed us that we had a phone message: Daddy, who was supposed to meet us in South Carolina later in the day, said he wouldn't be able to make it. The interstate across the mountains from Tennessee had been closed because of snow.
Snow! In April! In the "sunny South!" We could hardly believe it.
We attended the conference meetings and then decided to go over to East Tennessee to spend some time with Daddy. Stopping for gas at a local station, we noticed that a local TV news van at the opposite pump was covered in snow. I asked the driver where he had been, and he said Asheville. After chatting until our tank was full, we departed at 3:30 p.m. and headed toward Asheville and the mountains.
At 4:15, snow began falling--fast. Soon, the road was beginning to be covered. Traffic slowed. By 5:00, traffic had slowed to such a crawl that it took us two hours to travel 8 miles. By 7:00, it was at a standstill, and we remained, unmoving, until midnight. During that time, a highway patrolman walked car to car, telling drivers that two tractor trailers had collided inside a tunnel in the mountains and that we would be stuck where we were until the wreck was cleared, and asking how each driver was on gasoline. Thankfully, we had topped off our tank before we had left.
At midnight, highway patrolmen turned traffic around at the nearest exit and redirected us back east. We, too, turned around, but we took the next exit to the east and searched for a motel where we could spend the night. None had a vacancy. We found an out-of-business gas station just off the interstate where we could sleep in the car, and throughout the night I awoke, turned the car on long enough to warm it, then shut it off. Periodically when I awoke, I got out and brushed the accumulating snow away from the exhaust pipe. Every time I awoke, I checked the interstate only to see the same cars in the same places.
The snow at that point was 20 inches deep, and snow was still falling. We had had some big snows in Pennsylvania, but this Tennessee boy, who is used to milk, bread, and eggs suddenly disappearing from store shelves at the mere hint of snow accumulation, 5 inches was considered a big snow. This was a hundred-year blizzard.
At 5:00 a.m., we awoke and, seeing a few cars moving west on the interstate, got back on, thinking that the roads were finally open. However, we soon ran into stopped vehicles. From 5:00 until 7:00, we again were at a standstill. National Guardsmen and Red Cross volunteers were checking the cars to see if everyone was okay and telling us that the wreck in the tunnel had not yet been cleared. The snow now was 30 inches deep.
Everyone was getting hungry, so we backed up about a mile to the exit where we had spent the night and found a Holiday Inn, where we entered in search of breakfast. The lobby was packed with stranded and hungry motorists. The motel offered us what they could, but their menu was severely limited; it was grits, eggs, and orange juice, and motel personnel had had to go to a local convenience store to obtain even that limited fare.
News trickled in to the refugees from the storm. The National Guard was reporting that all roads were closed, except I-40 East. We didn't want to go east; we wanted to go west.
We called Daddy to let him know what was happening. He told us that our brother-in-law was on his way to rescue us. (Remember, this was the days before GPS.) Being a salesman whose territory gave him an extensive knowledge of the roads in the region, he was able to follow a snowplow across the mountains via US 19 through Fontana, arriving at the motel in Maggie Valley at 11:00 a.m. We followed him back via the same route, finally arriving at Daddy's house at 3:30 p.m. What normally was a three-hour drive had taken us 24 hours. At only 5:30 p.m. did the National Guard reopen I-40, the wreck in the tunnel finally having been cleared.
It had been quite an adventure for us all. And we learned some important lessons about safe travel as a result. Ever since that day, whenever we travel long distances, we take food, drinks, blankets, and flashlights with us. Even in warm weather when no one even dreams of snow and ice. One never knows what might occur, and we now prefer to be prepared--just in case.
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