A Cross Country Snow Crawl?

I know you’re wondering. Did they get lost in the backwoods of Virginia at pitch black 4:30am?  Did Laura squeal with delight while maneuvering the treacherous switchbacks on the mountain roads leading to the Blue Ridge Parkway? Did they survive that icy blizzard in the hills of North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains? Have they feasted on the leftovers Mama Mueller packed for them before they left Randolph?

And the answers, my friends, would be a neat package of resounding yesses (with a few girlish shrieks from Leiha ripping through the paper).

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We left Geiger (dear, extraordinary Geiger and her lovely family – shout out to Cullen and their two beautiful boys!) and Fairfax, VA at 4am on Monday morning. Our goal was to get to Skyline Drive, which feeds into the Blue Ridge Parkway, by sunrise. Well, we got there with plenty of time to spare. Turns out, the sun doesn’t rise these days until nearly 7:30. We got to the beginning of Skyline Drive at Front Royal, VA at 4:30am. (Ahem...three hours early.) So we starting driving. Continue on our way, we thought, and the sun will just have to catch up to us as we travel southwest. Well, the sun had no such plans.

Skyline Drive was barricaded 5 miles in.  No thru traffic because of snow and ice. Bummer. Back northeast for us. We made our way over some mountains and back to I-81S and drove for awhile, meeting up with the sun further east than we’d intended.

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I have a 2-year-old nephew who likes to climb into a spinning chair at my parents’ house and entreat, “Go wee?” until you twirl the chair (and him), at which point he starts squealing, “Wee!”

Now I know how he feels. The eventual detour we took off of the interstate to the Blue Ridge Parkway was nearly 35 miles long, and it was a slithering weave of a drive that swirled through the mountains and twizzled itself into such knots that we passed both ends of the same intersecting road. I was exhilarated. In fact, I couldn’t stop myself from squealing “wee!” as I hit the gas (and then quickly the break – what do you want from me? I’m a wuss at heart) and whirled around the curves like nobody’s business. Feeling like my nephew in the spinning chair.

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Cut to crossing the North Carolina border. And send a massive shoutout to my brother Brian, who spent part of his Friday afternoon putting snow tires on my car (my car’s name, by the way, is Tamara Natasha – I couldn’t decide on just one).

The snow wasn’t so bad initially, and the highways were pretty clear, but our NC hostess Brenda definitely does not live on the highway. She has a gorgeous, secluded log cabin (and it does somehow manage to be a cabin, despite its size and opulent amenities) on a bluff overlooking the Johns River on one side and being dwarfed by Grandfather Mountain on another.

The narrow mountain roads from I-40W to her house were unplowed and unsalted. We crawled along in the tracks of cars – actually, mostly trucks – that had already passed. But it was worth it, if only to know that my snow tires could tread up her driveway, which was quite steep and completely uncleared. Tamara Natasha’s were the first tire tracks to compress those four inches of snow.

And, again, it was worth it. We had a wonderful time with Brenda, my aunt’s old college tennis coach, who is almost excessively sweet (and has such comfortable beds!). Actually, she told me a lot about my family’s past from a very interesting perspective (look out Aunt Kathy – I’ve got ammo!).

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And as for those leftovers…well, we told you about the snow. Let me now tell you about the jokes we’ve been making about the time of year we ended up rolling across the nation in a little front wheel drive Honda Accord with two names. And also the funny looks we see as kind, responsible people ask us why on earth we’re doing this in January.

We stopped at a rest stop and a (very cold) picnic area off of I-40W just after we crossed from North Carolina into Tennessee. We took out the cooler in which we’d packed a couple of tupperwares full of pasta and steak and turkey and chicken on a stick. And my mom’s chocolate chip whoopee pies and pumpkin bread. And meatballs. And some pre-cut cheese. All before we left New Jersey over 48 hours earlier.

As we dug in to our free meal from my mother’s kitchen, I think Leiha made the best observation of the trip so far when she said, “If we were doing this trip in the summer, we couldn’t have kept the food so long!” Well done, winter roadtrip. Well done.

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To Katie, Re: music tastes. I didn’t know you had been a thug in the early 90s. Nor did I know you were a fan of Forrest Gump’s mother...and by that I mean that your 3-CD set is like a box of chocolates: We never know what we’re gonna get. (As Leiha puts it, “A delightful assortment of…what?”) In other news, this is for you:

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Oh, hello Nashville. It's nice to see you again. Want to go line dancing?