The Arkansas Ice Storm

Dispatch called last Monday, 2/2/09, to see if I was available to pick a truck up in Frederick, MD for delivery to Paragould, AR, a trip of about 900 miles, not counting the 225 miles deadhead from home to Frederick. I felt that would be a good trip, plus Arkansas remained as the one last state in the eastern half of the US that I had not been in, so I took the trip.

I left early Tuesday on the deadhead to Frederick, arriving about 10:30 AM. I found the forestry services (chipper body with a boom) truck, pre-tripped, and was on the road by 11:30 AM. The most direct routing would have taken me through WV and KY, but snow was forecast, plus KY had been hard hit by the ice storm. I would have liked to have viewed that, but didn't want to fight the snow or the possibility of no fuel in KY if the lights were still out. So I took the I-81 route south that would take me by home through southwest VA and across TN. I made it to Blue Ridge, where I live, by about 4:00 PM and decided to stay the night at home and proceed on the next morning. There was snow forecast for overnight in southwest VA.

Wednesday morning, I was on the road by 7:00 AM. I soon hit snow squals by the time I got 50 miles down the road to Blacksburg, and they progressively got worse as I proceeded down I-81 through Wythville toward Abington. It actually got fairly bad approaching Abington, and they had enough salt on the road to sink a ship, which totally turned my green tow car white.

I wanted to visit my son, who lives in Nashville, as I went through, but the timing was such that I needed to get this ice storm truck on to AR. As I went through TN, I contacted the delivery person, and was told that since I wouldn't arrive in Paragould on Wednesday, that I needed to take the truck to Springdale, AR, an additional 300 miles. That was OK, but would start raising some concerns about getting back home by the weekend. I'll be returning to Montana on Monday and wanted a few days around the house before I left.

I stayed the night in Jackson, TN and proceeded on to Springdale, AR on Thursday morning. I arrived there about 3:00 PM and staged the truck at a Travelodge. Dispatch could not find a return trip, so I had to deadhead the whole 997 miles back home. I drove about 400 miles back to Jackson for the night, a total of about 800 miles for the day.

I had planned to visit my son in Nashville the next day, but I ended up getting too early of a start and he wasn't yet up as I approached, so I kept on going. Naturally, I got a call from him just as I was east of Nashville, but I didn't feel like turning around so promised a visit later. I arrived home about 5:00 PM on Friday. That was about 2,400 miles and several really long travel days.

I did get to see Arkansas for the first time, and can only say their rest stops are almost as bad as our VA rest tops, but the Ozarks looked like they had some potential. I joked with my friend that I had to take a shower after I left AR, since Bill Clinton had been there. I guess that's not politially correct, or is it?