West Virginia Winter

Over our Christmas break, hubby and I had remarked to each other and some friends that we had experienced a mild winter, with only a few days of rain and cold but NOT snow and how blessed we felt that our winter up until then had been relatively stress free and, well boring.  I didn't think about it at the time, but mentioning that was probably NOT a good thing to do.  From our ten plus years on the road, it serves us well to NOT become complacent or lulled into thinking we will NOT have a problem.

For the next two weeks after coming back, we still didn't have any real issues, but sometimes when you least expect it you get thrown a curveball. That curveball left us stuck on a slippery, snowy mountain with an empty trailer in West Virginia.

On Wednesday, I was awakened by hubby because it had started snowing pretty heavily, and he wanted me to get up and sit in the passenger seat.  I am sometimes up later than him, but he has ALWAYS told me  that if the weather is bad, he wants me sitting up front. I hurriedly got dressed and did what he asked.  The weather that day was NOT that good at all and it made more stress that we had an empty trailer.  We pulled into a rest area to wait out the storm, but it had tapered off some so we decided to keep going to our pickup point.  Less than a mile from the rest area, the interstate was closed due to an overturned truck that had spilled its load of canned goods. The cars had been allowed to continue as they were small enough to squeeze thru the lane that was opened, but partially blocked( The truck took up a lane and a half). After a long wait, a few hours at least, the lane was cleared enough for trucks to continue moving.  While the roads were snow covered in spots, it was okay to drive on.  About 40 minutes from our pickup point, the snow got really heavy again. To reach the shipper, we had to climb a long winding mountain, we were making it okay even at a reduced speed, but we had to slow down even further when the truck in front of us started sliding and got stuck, but was able to get free and continue.  For some reason, maybe because we were practically stopped and more than half way  up the mountain, we could NOT get enough speed and ended up stuck.

Thanks to the local fire department and a plow driver, we were able to get moving again, but I was getting worried that we might be stuck there all night.  We made it to our pickup point where they loaded our trailer and pointed us to a safe parking spot for the night. All of the help we received was greatly appreciated!!! Wish I would have been able to do more to show it as just saying "Thank You" doesn't seem to be enough in situations like these.


The point of this story is even though we had been doing this for years, we still had a problem, I'm sure some who might NOT have known hubby's level of experience would have thought he was a rookie, but these types of situations can happen to anyone at any time no matter how many years experience they have.  It happened to us and it can happen to you.  I hope that even non-truckers can learn by this experience, at least I hope so. I KNOW, this trucker's wife learned a lesson that night on a slippery, snowy mountain during a West Virginia winter.

Lamentations 3:22 (New Living Translation)

 The faithful love of the Lord never ends!

  His mercies never cease.