Fog and other slow goings

Spent the morning in a fog. Literally.

It's an occupational hazard when your road goes through the mountains. Like they told you when you were little, fog is a cloud that touches the ground. When the ground is way up high...

And in the dark it's especially fun.

I was lucky this time. Visibility never dropped below a hundred (or so) yards. I never really had to slow down. But it's still a little off-putting to sit in your vague white bubble, watching the taillights go by and dim out.

I was out of the fog by daybreak. That's when things really slowed down.

I've talked about stop-and-go traffic and how I stay sane dealing with it. But that's usually a city thing. Out in the country, if you have a traffic problem it's usually because of construction or accident; and you either slow down (but keep moving) or your stop altogether.

This, on the other hand, was honest-to-goodness move-half-a-mile-and-then-stop-again stuff.

My best guess was that I finally got tripped up by that rockslide from a few weeks back. The one that's closed I-40 between North Carolina and Tennessee for the foreseeable future. I-77 is one of the main detour routes for that mess. And the fact that most of the traffic went south on I-81 when I went north made me feel so intelligent...

A while later I felt even better. An electronic sign at the state line said “COFFEE BREAK AT WELCOME CENTER.” Always willing to consider free food (or even free coffee), I pulled in.

I almost couldn't park. The truck pull-through's were mostly full—of cars. Overflow from the “regular” spaces, apparently. Lots of people going to Grandmother's house, I guess.

But they were generous enough to leave a couple of spaces for us poor truckers. And the nice people in the tent had cookies! HOMEMADE cookies! Not exactly an orthodox Thanksgiving dinner, but a nice start.