Thanksgiving Traffic

For Thanksgiving, Rob and I traveled north to Newport News, VA to spend the weekend with some of my college friends. We left on Thanksgiving rather early as it is a 10 hour drive to their house. Along the way we were greeted with that mythical holiday traffic that people have been known to warn others about while traveling on the roads. This was helped out of course by the first serious down pour the south has seen in months.

We had left at 8am and were about 30 minutes from the house traveling on 285E heading onto 85N when the first incident happened. There are two exit lanes onto 85N, the left hand lane was a split from 285. We were in the right exit lane and in the left lane was a double trailer 18 wheeler. We were traveling behind him and watched a red pick up truck try to pull in front of him to make the exit at the last second. The pick up basically hydroplaned, spun around, was clobbered by the 18 wheeler in the rear passenger rear wheel (got to hear the crunch that makes your stomach knot) and ended up perpendicular to the highway in low visibility. I got to make my first 911 call to report the accident. Not a good omen to start the trip.

The second incident happened about 2 hours into the trip in South Carolina. We had been happily cruising along being careful about the roads when traffic came to a somewhat sudden stop. I say this because we had time to stop, but a tracker trailer didn't. To avoid hitting anyone, he veered off to the left shoulder which didn't really exist. He got to a point where the trailer almost tipped because he was at about a 30 degree angle on the grade. He managed to hold onto to it and got back on the highway. Holy crap. I think he did an awesome job with that one. It was sad to see people not letting him back in though. So why were we all stopped? Well we came upon some minor secondary accidents of people rear-ending others and then saw THE accident. This was a rolled SUV with a door missing, dented roof, and grass all over it. There were a few people along the highway picking up what looked to be what used to be in the vehicle. Scary.

Thankfully we made it the rest of the way without incident. the combination of bad road conditions and holiday travelers make for an icky ride. Let's hope the ride home is better.