Drive To Virginia, Snow

According to the plan, the trip to Virginia was supposed to start at 3:00AM on December 19. We were supposed to pack the car and go to bed early Friday night so we could get an early start Saturday. Things didn’t go as planned.

While packing the car, Andrew climbed in and strapped himself in. This was at 9:00PM. We were still 6 hours from our planned time of departure. He said he was ready to go now. We told him we weren’t ready to go yet. He said he wanted to stay in the car. He also said he was getting tired, and soon afterwards was asleep.

We finished packing and thought about our plan. We decided that it didn’t make sense to wake up Andrew while getting him out of the car, so we scrapped the plan. Instead, we decided to leave early – really early.

The trip up went well, even though half of it was in the dark. Before we left, we heard that there was a winter storm heading for Virginia and perhaps North Carolina. During the drive, Susan’s Mom kept us informed as to the current conditions and even suggested that we might want to stop and come later. Apparently, the predictions were coming true and snow was falling heavily in Richmond. Our curiosity was piqued; it’s rare to see snow in Richmond and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Andrew was very excited about the idea of playing in the snow.

In northern North Carolina, we started seeing our first traces of snow in patches in the grass along the interstate. Crossing into Virginia, the grass was covered with snow. By Petersburg, snow was covering the road and our drive was beginning to be affected. When we turned off the interstate to bypass downtown Richmond, only one lane of the the road had been touched by plows and the snow was about four inches deep on the other lane. As we neared the west end of Richmond, we nearly came to a stop due to a line of plows that crossed the entire highway. We decided to get off the highway and take the back roads the remaining distance.

Our first back road choice almost got us into trouble. The road had not been plowed and there were only deep tire tracks in the snow. We drove this for about a half mile before we came to a stop. There was a large tow truck blocking our progress. Eventually we started again and as we crested a hill, we saw a semi truck jackknifed ahead blocking the road - that explained the large tow truck. We turned around in the steadily deepening snow and returned to route 250. We tried a different route and, this time, had no issues to deal with. Thanks to all the snow, we missed setting a new personal best time-to-drive record to Virginia. ;)

When we got up this morning, the world was blanketed in white. Needless to say, Andrew was beside himself with excitement. We put on our warmest clothes – we did have warning, so we had our coats, boots, and gloves.