“Caution: mountain weather changes rapidly.” If you spend
enough time perusing any National Park Service webpage you’re bound to come
across this warning. I know what it usually means – that storm you see way off
in the distance will be on you much sooner than you think and it will be more
severe than you expect, so be prepared. In general, I do come prepared for such
eventualities, entering parks with a full tank of gas, an emergency blanket
(Thanks, Zach’s Bar Mitzvah),
something to start a fire, and enough food to last the rest of my trip. But
there’s one thing that I have never brought and today it finally came back to
bite me: A backup plan.
After today, it’s clear that I have two forces working against me on this trip: Mother Nature and the people of Virginia. I did everything right. I checked the weather last week and there wasn’t supposed to be any precipitation for 2 days on either side of today. I turned on the TV this morning just to be sure, and suddenly a Winter Weather Advisory had popped up for the entire southern Appalachian region. So just to be safe, I called (yes, you read that right – called with a phone) Shenandoah National Park, my intended destination for the day, to check if Skyline Drive, the only road through the park, was open. According to the message the road was open from mile 0 to mile 105 – its entire route. It was 8:20am.
So I set out from the northern park entrance and began
working my way south, stopping at several of the overlooks. The views were
nice, but I suspect that, like most parks, the best scenery is in the middle of
the park. Same thing happened at Grand Teton.
For these first 30 miles, I had the road to myself, encountering less than a
dozen other vehicles, most of which were National Park Service trucks.
When I reached the first intersection with a road that ran
through the park going east-west, I came face to face with a barricade. “Road
closed.” This didn’t seem right to me. After all, I had checked only an hour
earlier and the road was open. Surely the forecast couldn’t have changed that
much in so little time. So I called the number back. This time I heard a
different message, telling me that Skyline
Drive was now closed at all points south of me due
to expected snow and ice that afternoon. The time on the message was 8:38am. I looked around, and while I
know that mountain weather changes rapidly, there was no storm anywhere I could
see. The message continued with the official forecast, which called for an inch
of snow falling in the afternoon and evening. Now I know that people down here
aren’t as used to snow as I am, but this seemed ridiculous. A mountainous
national park with a road that stays open in the winter and they don’t have the
capability of clearing an inch of snow, so they therefore close 80 miles of
road 12 hours in advance of the weather? Virginia isn’t for lovers, Virginia
is for pussies.
So I begrudgingly headed down the western slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains, figuring I’d get an early start on
my other important destination for the day: Best Buy. After an hour’s drive to
the store I had found last night, I was greeted by a sheet metal door. The
store wasn’t open yet. Well, I guess that’s understandable. It was only 11am. I’m telling you, these
Virginians… So I went into Wal-Mart (as quickly as possible so I didn’t come
into contact with Walmartitis) and found a power adapter there. Then I felt
dumb because I had passed a Wal-Mart in Front Royal this morning. Oh well, it
wasn’t like I had a tight schedule anymore.
From that point on, I had to call an audible (a la Eli Manning)
for the rest of the day. I decided I’d do Luray Caverns today and take another
shot at Skyline Drive
on my way back north, just going the other way. This place was (and I can’t
believe I’m about to say this) hella cool.
Under what looked like just one of innumerable hills in the Shenandoah Valley sits this maze of stalagmite-lined
tunnels that look like a cross between something out of Indiana Jones and the
Batcave. At any moment, I expected to have to stop what I was doing and run
away from a giant boulder rolling down the path.
This is a shaggy dog. This is a very shaggy dog... |
The tour guide talked about the names of each of the
formations, which I paid little attention to, since I was far more interested
in looking at this crazy structure created by nature than in listening to why a
bunch of grizzled 19th century prospectors named a particular rock
after George Washington (for the record, if George Washington looked like a
25-foot tall white rock-encrusted column, it’s no surprise we won the war). So
I spent about 90% of the hour-long tour staring up at the ceiling and trying to
avoid any signs of human intervention in the cavern.
The one interesting human contribution was the addition of a
stalactite pipe organ, played by mechanically tapping a series of stalactites
that produced notes. After seeing it and hearing it in action, I became
convinced that when he wasn’t in the basement of the Paris Opera, this was the
vacation home of the Phantom of the Opera.
After the Luray tour, it was only 1:30 and I was out of
ideas for the day. So I checked the place’s website for other area attractions
and realized that Monticello,
the home of Thomas
Jefferson featured on the back of
the nickel, was a little more than an hour away. I had considered visiting Monticello anyway but it
hadn’t worked with my previous itinerary. Now that that was out the window, I
was free to take the trip back east over the Blue Ridge Mountains, through the
walled cage of the Shenandoah Valley, and into Charlottesville, with an ETA an
hour before the last tour was set to depart.
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the mansion.
Remember that phantom Shenandoah snow? It finally showed up. First came
flurries, then a steadier stream of flakes. I wasn’t worried, though, because
the car said it was 39 degrees, so I knew none of it would stick. I was over
the mountains, too, so I didn’t expect the temperature to fall more than 7
degrees in an hour over a flat area. Herein lay my two fatal mistakes: I
underestimated the weather and I overestimated the Virginians.
Five miles outside of Charlottesville,
the snow was coming down heavily and sticking to grass, but the roads were
still completely clear. In fact, one guy even got out of his car and tried to
explain this to the policewoman who had closed off all of I-64. She was having
none of it, and routed hundreds of now-panicked Virginian motorists onto a
local road.
Now I was getting nervous that I would miss that last tour because
of traffic. Then the snow soon began to stick while I watched in horror as the temperature
dropped to 31, then 29 degrees. Between the deer-in-headlights drivers and the
lack of visible wintry infrastructure (Charlottesville
brags that it now has 24 plows. That’s 24 more than I saw. I guess the drivers
have negotiated the same schedule as the Best Buy workers) led to a travel
speed of about 10 miles an hour. By the time I turned on to Monticello Road, there were 2 inches on
the grass and the road was white.
I had no problem with this and felt an obligation to
instruct the poor souls around me on how to manage such conditions: Put the car
into a lower gear, give yourself lots of braking time, keep a ridiculous amount
of space between you and the car in front of you, and absolutely positively do
not stop while going uphill, lest you be unable to start moving again. These
were all strategies that those around me clearly struggled with. But I kept my
distance and soldiered on. I parked and headed up to the visitor’s center to
buy my ticket.
Alas, the ticket seller dudes had apparently seen the ground
turn white, assumed it had contracted leprosy, and fled to his doomsday bunker.
In fact, the entire estate had closed down an hour early on account of that
inch of anticipated snow. So I wasn’t going into the mansion, but I thought
maybe I could take the half-mile trail to at least see Jefferson’s grave. But at the trailhead were
several signs warning potential freeloading hikers that tickets were required.
I had already seen some version of a police officer standing around and while I
didn’t know which branch of the military was responsible for guarding the
graves of long-dead presidents I wasn’t in the mood to find out. So I left, but
not before once again checking the Monticello
website to see if I had missed the closing announcement. Nope, and according to
it I could still go back and have another hour to look around. You stay classy,
Monticello.
Little did I know that it would only be after I descended
the twisty road out of Monticello-land that things would get really
interesting. I had decided to bag any subsequent audibles and just head for my
hotel in Waynesboro,
even though it was still relatively early. I-64 was now open in that direction,
but apparently the state of Virginia hadn’t seen fit to
sand, salt, or plow the main thoroughfare
for the center of the state, which was now basically a snowy sidewalk. For
most of the trip, I was comfortable going about 50, following my rules from
earlier, except when a right-lane imbecile decided to block the left lane going
35. The most frustrating thing was that I couldn’t give him the classic “get
the hell out of my way” signals – tailgating or high beams – because both would
require me to get too close, which might spook ‘em and cause a massive pileup.
A few miles in, I realized I had bigger problems than drivers
stuck in the 19th century: If I had crossed the Blue
Ridge going east, I was going to have to cross it again going west
– this time with several inches of unplowed snow on the road. That was where
travel slowed to 15 miles an hour, and for good reason. I passed at least a
dozen accidents in those 2-3 miles, none of which had injuries so can therefore
be made fun of. One car was parked in the left lane, having clipped the
guardrail at just the right angle, tearing off his bumper but leaving the rest
of the car undamaged. An obviously-delusional Corvette driver who thought it
wise taking the thing out on such a beautiful day had rear ended a much cheaper
car. At least 3 cars had slid into the median and were now stuck, and a few
drivers had simply given up and parked in the right lane. At one point I passed
a fire truck responding to one of the accidents, only to be passed again by him
a few minutes later as he moved on to another accident a little further up the
road.
In the end, I made it to the Royal Inn without incident,
despite my Electronic Stability Control light having a seizure for the last
half-mile.
The snow is supposed to subside in the next few hours, leaving up to
6 inches of snow in the area. It seems likely that I’ll be calling on Eli again tomorrow, as the Blue Ridge Parkway is currently closed
through all of Virginia
and all but about 10 miles in North
Carolina. I’m still holding out hope that it will
reopen south of milepost 300 before I get there. But even if it doesn’t, one of
my BRP destinations is actually on a different road near the Parkway, so I
might still be able to go to that. Of course, that too might be closed due to
weather. The good news, at least, is that this will almost definitely be the
last weather I encounter on this trip, as the temperature is expected to reach
50 throughout the region tomorrow and for the rest of the week. So if those
guys in the Smokies can’t get the roads open in 36 hours with 50 degree
weather, I’m driving in anyway and claiming the park as my own sovereign
nation. After all, who among them would be able to drive in and stop me?
Welcome (belatedly) to the South.
ReplyDeleteWhen I moved down to NC, I was warned about how people handle snow. I took it as an exaggeration.
My first winter it snowed. The state of North Carolina declared a statewide emergency and called in the National Guard. My mother called me panicking. "They said the National Guard is there! Are you okay?"
"Yes mom. There's about half an inch of snow outside."
It kept better better throughout the winter. Schools would close entire days before snow was supposed to fall and would remain closed for days afterward. People would flock to the store and buy out the entire stock of milk, bread and eggs.
When it snows, you can tell who is from up north because they are the only ones on the road going over 5mph.