My West Virginia travel adventure yesterday

I spent last week in Rodanthe in a fabulous vacation beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  We watched the sun come up every morning over the ocean and watched it go down at night on the sound.  The pace was slow and unplugged.

I decided to return to the mainland by ferry on Friday morning and spent the night in Greensboro NC.  I planned a beautiful daytime mountain drive through North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.   I was still unplugged and did not watch the news, so I did not know about the storms on Friday night.

As I approached further toward the Virginia/West Virginia border area, there were constant traffic jams lasting an hour or more each.  I didn't care.  I was happy to not have to drive fast and a long chance to enjoy the views while listening to Regina Spektor.

By the time I was approaching West Virginia, the traffic jams were thicker.  I pulled into a rest area to learn it was closed due to a power outage.  It was then I found out about the storm from other tourists and that a lot of West Virginia would be without power for a week. 

With a quarter tank of gas in the car, I knew I had to back track south to find gas and that I could make it 100 miles at most.  I finally found the only station within 220 miles that had power.  It also had at least 50 cars in line. 

Once I got gas, I then had to reroute the trip through the mountains and get on a different interstate.   Fortunately I found a Denny's with WI-FI and hospitable staff to look after me.

It took sixteen hours to get home yesterday.   I asked for a long mountain drive and God delivered!   I was pretty bleary-eyed when I arrived.  I'm thankful to God for helping me to get home safely.