Saturday was a pretty laid back day with the city for the most part snowbound. Hardly a vehicle was moving in the area and after venturing out to check a few things in the trailer I knew why. I found out that running shoes are not the best thing to wear for traction on the ice and had to hold on to the stair railing and tread easy and slowly to get to the sidewalk. If you had a pair of ice skates you could have skated on the street.
We stayed around the house and just made ready for the trip back tomorrow. Joan had a neckless that needed a couple of repairs so Jean worked on that. Jean is creative in all artistic endeavors but has specialized in jewelry making the last few years and does a lot of work in silver. She has some of the neatest tools including a small rolling mill to create consistently flat sheets to work with. Below she is working on Joan's necklace.
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Below is Joan and Jean just enjoying the time to relax. The weather was in one sense a blessing in that we could just stay in and relax and not feel like we needed to go and do something around town.
I spent some time on Jean's computer and making phone calls to AAA or whoever we could think of to try and get reports on road conditions. For all the technology available you would think that there would be better information readily available. I'll have to admit that the live video cameras at a couple of the entrances to tunnels on the turnpike were interesting and somewhat helpful.
Early Sunday morning I took a walk for a couple of blocks and went as far as the main side street along the complex to see what the local road conditions were like. I thought that if we could get to the Interstate that was just a few miles away we would be okay to travel. North Carolina uses very little road chemicals and don't have the equipment to plow snow as they normally only have one or two snows a year and they melt off in a day or so. A couple of intersections and a minor hill to get to the main street had been sanded and I was pretty sure that we could eventually get to the Interstate.
We said our goodbyes and crept out of the neighborhood with the trailer. That thousand pounds of tongue weight on the center of the rear wheels on the fifth wheel attachment helped I think as we made it all the way out without too much trouble. Don't know what I would have done if we would have started sliding backwards down that one grade with the trailer behind us.
We made it to the Interstate with little trouble. As we headed up good old I77 there was always one lane that was just wet but clear of ice but almost always one lane had ice that was breaking up and if you tried to drive on it you could only go about 20-30 miles per hour as it was extremely rough. Our solution was to follow the semi that was a discrete distance ahead of us and when he changed lanes we changed lanes. By the time we started climbing the mountain up to Fancy Gap the road was just wet and clear of all snow and ice.
As we pulled into the I think the first rest area in West Virginia we had clear Carolina blue skies and all was good as far as traveling. Parking along side a semi made me feel a little like one of the truckers. The poor trailer was covered with salt and dirt and in a sad state and was going to remain that way for a while after we got home.
The rest of the trip home was uneventfuland. We decided to go directly to the hospital in Massillon to see dad.
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