Welcome to the Iditarod....in North Carolina?

We certainly would have gotten here sooner this morning if we had used a dog sled and a team of huskies. We left Joe's moms house in NC last night about 6pm to make the 138 mile trek to Greenville, SC. There had been some winter weather advisories on the TV, so instead of waiting to watch the race, we elected to leave before the steady downpour of rain turned to ice.

We went about 10 miles south and the world turned into a winter wonderland. There was 2-3 inches of snow on the road, and more falling heavily. The further south we went, the harder it snowed, and we started seeing a lot of lightening as well. We eventually stopped counting all the 4 wheelers and big trucks stuck on the sides of the interstate.
It was an amazing sight to see and we heard it was like that all the way to Atlanta.

We did start to get stuck once about 5 miles north of the South Carolina border, however Joe was able to maneuver enough to get us out. We didn't get much further than that, as traffic came to a standstill. Red tail lights were stopped ahead of us for as far as the eye could see. We managed to get off an exit ramp, and along with a long line of big trucks, ended up spending the night parked on the side of the road.

We finally got rolling again this morning after several delays. Fortunately we were able to keep up a steady 25 mph pace, unlike the north bound lane, which were shut down in two separate spots for a few miles each.

It took us about 14 hours to travel 138 miles! The ironic thing is we had a choice between this load going to SC and another going to South Dakota. Joe took this one going to SC because he did not want to deal with any bad weather we might meet up with out west! Can you imagine if the first time we had to use our new chains was in North Carolina!!

But we made it safe and sound at our destination. There was a line of trucks waiting to unload when we got there, as the workers were not able to get in to work and they were not letting any trucks unload. We didn't have too long to wait though, and got unloaded in about 3 inches of water pretty quickly.

Now comes the wait for our next load..............