Weathering "Virgil"

This story is a little late, as it took place almost 3 weeks ago. Ah well, better late than never!

Winter storm "Virgil" was predicted to hit Missouri around the time we were to cross the border from Arkansas to Missouri. Kevin and I faced a 12+ hour drive from Hot Springs, Arkansas back to Michigan. We began early in the morning and as I dragged my still sleeping body to the car, I checked my phone just in case. A text from my mom essentially read "winter storm heading your way, probably best to stay where you are and drive tomorrow." Great! Actually, I was excited at the prospect of getting to stay another day. But Kevin's practicality won out and after I thought for a few minutes about all the homework I needed to get done and the paper I needed to write, I opted for braving the weather. Besides, it would be an adventure. The worst that could happen would be that we would have to pull over and get a hotel. Right?

The first six hours were relatively uneventful. It began to rain a little in Missouri and it was sleeting by the time we entered southern Illinois. Around 3pm, I took over driving and Kevin read a book. The roads were getting slick and I had to drive more and more slowly. 60 mph....50mph.....40mph....... 30mph......20mph.....10mph....stop. Traffic was backed up for almost a mile. There was an accident in one lane, but after passing the accident the speed didn't pick up again. I drove for two hours at the speed of 10 miles an hour, passing car after car that had gone off the road. There were three semis that got stuck on the road itself, their wheels spinning ridiculously on the one-inch layer of ice that covered the road. Kevin and I counted over 30 cars that had gone off the road in the space of the measly 20 miles I covered in two hours.

And then I had to go to the bathroom. Really badly. My mouth always gets kind of dry when I am in the car for several hours and while I had been trying to be temperate about drinking water I discovered that I hadn't been temperate enough. I was ready to split. The only problem was that we hadn't seen an exit or rest area in almost two hours. We finally found an exit with a gas station. 10 miles an hour feels so much slower on a full bladder and I had to slow down on the off-ramp. (Kevin and I had seen cars several hours earlier who had attempted to exit, likely rejoicing that they were going to get off the terrible roads, too quickly for the icy roads. Four cars lined one off-ramp alone.)

We made it to the gas station. It was closed. We tried to get to the gas station across the highway, but a semi had gotten stuck in the middle of the overpass and a car had gotten stuck trying to get around it and then another car....you get the idea... we turned around and headed back to the empty gas station and relieved ourselves behind an abandoned truck. Cue humorous bonding moment.

Kevin took over driving. I kept counting the cars. My mother sat at her computer several hundred miles away watching the progression of the storm and updating us with traffic and accident information. I had reached 70. 70 vehicles upended in the snow; tilting precariously along the side of the road; stranded in the median; hood-first in a snowbank. One SUV took out a fence when it went off the road; the wire hung limply where it had been detached from the wooden posts. The road continued to get worse. A snowplow leaned ditch-ward, its bulky frame blocking the shoulder. A few miles later, another snowplow sat with its shovel underneath a twisted railing. Three snowplows in all out of commission. No wonder the roads were so bad!

Somewhere between 50 and 70 vehicles, I called a hotel and booked a room. It was about 30 miles away when I booked it around 6 pm. It took 2 hours to get there.

We stopped at Panera before checking in at the hotel. They were closing early because of the weather and we barely got our food before they closed. We ate as quickly as we could so the workers wouldn't have to stay and we were not keen on being out after dark even if our hotel was only a few hundred yards away.

The snow in the parking lot of the hotel was so deep that Kevin had to make a parking space for himself by driving back and forth over a spot to ensure we wouldn't get stuck. Fortunately, the hotel had a jacuzzi and we spent several happy minutes thawing out and unwinding from such an intense trip.

What an adventure!