Jon, we left early Friday morning to attend my aunt’s funeral scheduled at 1:00 in Fredericksburg, Va. We live in Johnston County about 5 minutes from the Highway 42 ramp to I-40. The plan was to take I-40 to the Outer Beltline, then Highway 64 East to I-95 and up to Va. No go.
When we reached the on-ramp to I-40 West, traffic was stifled on the ramp and people were turning around and going the wrong way back up the ramp to seek an alternate route. We looked down on the Highway in the direction of I-40 East (with the thought of picking up I-95 in that direction) and in the distance we could see traffic at a standstill there also. Continuing east on Highway 42 met with obstruction, so we u-turned and thought we’d try Highway 50 down to 70, then to the beltline from Garner…nope.
So….we ended up taking a back road (Cleveland School Road) to Smithfield, picked up Highway 210 (where traffic was temporarily stifled by an accident but got moving), to Business 70, then I-95 North.
The gridlock was not limited to the Triangle, however. I-95 in NC was pretty much okay, but once we got into Virginia all the overpasses were frozen and I would say at least 60 percent of them had at least minor accidents near them — no exaggeration. Fortunately few of them caused any backups until we got within 25 miles of Fredericksburg, where we got into another bad delay. This made us think we would not make the funeral on time and we called ahead to let family know…but we arrived at exactly 1:00 p.m., were whisked into the waiting area for family, and made it into our seats for what was the most God-honoring, inspiring service of this type that I’ve ever seen. Thanks be to God!
