So the first installment of the interviewing process went smoothly... that is until we left Greeneville, TN. We were there for just a quick trip so Edgar could meet with Laughlin Hospital. It was a great meeting and the grandparents got to spend some time with the girls (see previous post for pictures from that visit... I think they are under the 8th month). This post is all about the drive home from that trip... what a trip it was!!
We knew that we were supposed to get some bad weather, but thought it would be later in the day. On Sunday, Edgar and I felt confident that if we headed home to Durham after the girls had their lunch, we'd make it in plenty of daylight and miss the weather. WRONG.
We didn't even make it to Black Mountain!!
We were driving up a different mountain, forget the name of it, and as we climbed higher, the snow started to fall harder and harder. We knew that if we could make it over the mountain we'd be fine. Weelllll.... as we were traveling up the mountain, the snow was probably a couple inches thick. While that doesn't sound like much, North Carolina is hardly equipped to handle such a snowfall in such a short period, much less on the "rural" roads that we were on. A truck to our left spun out, and nearly missed our car. I FREAKED out. But, Edgar, the cool, level-headed guy that he is, kept his wits about him and trudged on.
As we proceeded up the mountain, we came across a black mustang with three guys pushing the car up the mountain. Clearly, these guys were idiots for not pushing the car to the side of the road. Becuase of these guys, the semi in front of us had to come to a complete stop. Fine. We were willing to wait it out for the idiots to realize that they can't push the Mustang up the mountain. Their wheels were spinning and clearly not going anywhere. Fine. Uuuuntil...
... the weight of the stopped Semi caused the truck to jackknife and slide back into the car beside us. Had Edgar not have had the wherewithall to change gears and reverse, travel to the far left of the road... the jack-knifed Semi would have creamed us. It was moving that fast, coming towards us, backwards. I jumped in the back seat with the girls. Not that that would have helped anything, but I at least felt like I could "protect" them. I was so scared for our safety. Luckily, we were able to reverse and narrowly miss the Semi. Narrowly. I know I sound dramatic, but it was darn scary.
Meanwhile, Grandmuggs and Jeffy were FREAKING out because they couldn't get in touch with us and they knew we were in trouble. There were cars and trucks stranded all of the side of the small highway, but we knew that we could not have stayed up there with two small children. Since it was such a short trip, we didn't have nearly enough supplies to last us. In fact, we had exactly 4 diapers and 8 wipes. I was wearing flip flops for crying out loud!
Anyway, so we soldiered on down a 6% grade down the mountain. While we were going down, the snow was not nearly as bad... but we still had another mountain to climb before we could make it home. And we weren't playing that game again.
So we got a motel in Woodfin, NC. Never heard of Woodfin? Yeah, us either. It wasn't a glamorous hotel, but it did the trick. (and thanks to Grandmuggs and Pop Pop for surprising us by picking up the bill!) The pictures are above. The snow was not nearly as bad in this picture, but it got worse. Luckily, by the time we got the hotel, a nearby restaurant was still delivering pizza (and beer!). Later that night, the motel was filled with no vacancy. I guess other travelers had the same sentiment. Anyway, when we got there, we wallowed for a bit -- see the pictures. (sidebar/disclaimer: in the picture of me... you can see my hair is starting to grow back from the post-partum hair fall out. I have little spikes all over my head! Terrible picture of me --no makeup --but we had a good time.) We put the girls down for the night and cracked open a six pack. It was fun! I felt like I was back in college -- see our makeshift cooler.
Due to the lack of supplies, we had to mix the girls' cereal in a hotel paper cup and feed them with a plastic spoon. Not an easy feat, I must admit. We heated the water in the coffeemaker. Thankfully they don't take bottles and thankfully we had enough babyfood. On the way home, we operated under the "don't ask, don't tell" policy with the diaper situation.
This is the stuff memories are made of!
Later we found out that the jack-knifed Semi caused the road to be shut down overnight.
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