Photo courtesy of NOAA
The blue line on our GPS led us straight ahead. We were only 16 minutes and 10 miles from Boone. The ETA for our hotel was 7:00 PM, but a one-inch ribbon of yellow tape tied from a downed tree on one side of the road to a standing tree on the other warned us to turn around. That was not an easy feat in the rain and fog, on a narrow, curving, steep road in the middle of North Carolina. The only light was provided by headlights. Hurricane Hellene had knocked out power for miles.
After a five-point turn, I headed slowly back the way we came. This was the third dead end we had faced, and the GPS had run out of options. Heading in the opposite direction was an 18-wheeler. I stopped and rolled down my window.
“Road’s closed ahead.”
The trucker tucked his chin to his chest and cursed.
“You might be able to turn on that gravel ahead.”
“Nope, I’ll have to fucking back up down this.”
He pulled off his red baseball cap and scratched angrily at his scalp.
There was a line of two cars stuck behind the truck, so I pulled up to each of them.
“I drove over the yellow tape this morning,” said the first driver, but I think she turned around.
“Are you heading to Boone? Trying to get to 421?” the second driver asked. “You can follow me.”
I trailed his taillights, back down the hill, past the entrance to the legendary Blue Ridge Parkway. This had been one of our previous dead ends. We had zig-zagged left and right into the opposite-bound lane as we dodged downed trees and piles of branches. Finally, we came upon a downed power line arching almost down to the pavement, so we had to retreat.
Following our guide, we reached the next entrance to 421. We could see traffic moving just 20 yards ahead, but once again, a thin yellow tape stretched across the road, mocking us. “You can see me, but you can’t get me!” A large black puddle about ten feet in circumference blocked our lane and ½ the opposite side. For a moment, I thought we could just skirt the puddle and be on our way. What was a little bit of tape? Then I looked again. It wasn’t a puddle. It was a cavernous hole. The road had almost completely washed away. I could see no bottom to it. The thought crossed my mind that there was still a third of the width of the road left… I decided to be smart and live instead.
“The next entrance is eight miles back,” shouted our guide through the rain.
We followed the rolling hills for about half an hour. A number of the intersections were blocked by police or fire vehicles; their red and blue lights glared in the otherwise pitch blackness.
We finally made it to the entrance of the four-lane state road. The stop lights were working here, and when the light turned green, we waved enthusiastically to our guide and turned right as our GPS demanded. We turned wrong. We found out later that the GPS towers were downed by the storm. There was no cell coverage. Google Maps and Waze were malfunctioning throughout the area. A couple of miles down the road, a car approached in my rearview mirror and flashed its high beams. I pulled to the right lane. It was our guide. He had seen our mistake and had turned around to set us on the right path. The GPS came back to life. “Arrival in 22 miles,” it read.
Once again, we returned to the stoplight. I was surprised to see the 18-wheeler with the red-hatted driver pull out in front of us. He had somehow managed to back his way down the hill to a suitable turning spot.
Earlier that day, the weather was deceptively calm. A storm had hit Yorktown the night before, but by morning, we assumed it had passed. The sun even peeked through as we left the Hornsby House Inn and made our way to Brunswick County Library, two hours away. There, the librarian had gathered everything she could about Concord, Brunswick County, Virginia. There wasn’t much.
I’ll expand upon our visit to The Concord Presbyterian Church in another entry, but we had a lovely stop at this idyllic 1826 church.
This was the one day that our plans were flexible. I hadn’t known how long we’d spend in Virginia before heading down to two Concords in North Carolina that were only an hour apart from each other. We had a long drive ahead of us, so I wanted to treat ourselves to a fine dinner and overnight. The Gideon Ridge Inn, though expensive, had an award-winning restaurant, and while it was an hour further west, oh…what the heck. It took forever to get through the voicemail labyrinth, but finally, we had our dinner, our bed, and our destination for the night.
We had seen signs of Hurricane Hellene: piles of brush, freshly cut log piles, linemen in bucket trucks, town maintenance workers regrading the side of the road. I was convinced that the storm had passed to our east, so we continued west. The Blue Ridge Mountains stood between us and our hotel. We started up the winding four-lane road. This was the road that eventually, after many diversions, ended in the one-inch yellow ribbon over the road.
Eventually, we made it back to Rt. 421, and while the patches of fog and sudden downpours made the driving difficult, we simply followed the glowing tail lights in front of us. It had been a long drive, but we were a mere 10 miles away when we drove down into a valley and turned off Rt. 421 onto Rt. 321 in the city of Boone, North Carolina.
Something was really wrong. The line outside the McDonald’s drive-thru extended from the parking lot onto the main drag for a quarter-mile. But Burger King was pitch black, cars were crammed in the Days Inn, and every other hotel. Many of the hotel parking lots were crammed with the bucket trucks of out-of-state linemen employed by electrical or telephone companies. Half the main strip of stores had power; the other half was eerily black. It was 9:30 PM, and the downtown traffic was heavy.
It had been over 12 hours since our breakfast, and we had skipped lunch, and by now, we had missed our swanky dinner reservation. The line of cars outside Chick-fil-A again extended onto the main road, but I noticed that no one seemed to be inside. We swung in, parked, and went right to the front of the counter to order our chicken sandwiches. The snaking drive-in line must have been for parents looking to bring some sort of food back to their cold, dark homes.
Liz, as always, was a trouper. Her “James Beard Award Winning” dining experience had been much reduced. At least we had room reservations 4 miles further down the road.
It was a harrowing four miles. Just outside Boone, all power, including the stoplights, was out. We made our way slowly out of town, up into the hills. In the distance, a police car had its flashers on. We were the only car going in either direction. Were the roads closed?
“Turn around,” said Liz. “It looks like they’ve closed the road.”
I slowed. The police car straddled a crossover between the lanes. Nothing was being stopped or redirected, so I continued on and exited toward Blowing Rock. The road meandered ever upward past a multitude of broken branches and an occasional downed tree. A few of the homes along the way had the glow of lights provided by an emergency generator. Most were just black shadows on an even blacker background. We crept past the restaurant. It was clear that they had been closed all day. No wonder they never answered their phone. We followed the signs upward toward the inn’s office, but by this time, we both knew that there would be no one around. We stepped out of the car, stretched our legs, and took stock of the situation.
I was planning to attend the Sunday service of The Concord Presbyterian Church in Iradell, about minutes away the following morning. At this point, it was clear that there would be no church service on Sunday. The new plan was to drive toward the larger city of Charlotte. There had to be a hotel there. “Let’s go to the airport,” Liz suggested. “They have thousands of empty rooms.” We checked online, but something was wrong with our devices. Our phones and computers were useless.
We slowly weaved our way back down from Gideon Ridge.
There were two routes back to Charlotte: backtrack 2 1⁄2 hours back over the Blue Ridge Mountains through the chaos we had just navigated, or take the four-lane, 90-minute direct route. I picked the latter option. “Let’s go back the way we came” opined Liz. I disagreed, and I picked wrong.
The road was eerily quiet. It was lightly drizzling, and all was silent except for the intermittent wipers. There was no traffic in either direction
Route 421 had been cut out of the side of the mountains. We weaved left and right, up slight rises and down long steep declines. The highway dipped as we came around a bend - ahead was a floating mat of fog. The car dove into the soup, or should I say chowder, and immediately our high beams blinded me. I flicked them off and searched for features defining the road. I hugged the middle of the right side. We had another lane to our right, but I couldn’t see it. Even the yellow double-lined dividing markers were concealed. All that I could see, all that kept us from crashing over the edge on either side of the highway was the faint flash of the cat-eyes reflectors. It felt like a video game- follow the yellow flashes and we’d be fine. Just as I started to regain my confidence, the rain started. It felt like we had entered a carwash. The windscreen was only clear for a fraction of a second as the maxed wipers struggled in vain. The pounding on the roof was deafening. There was no place to pull over; all we could do was slow down even further and follow the bending path of the cat’s eyes. Occasionally, one or two of the reflectors were missing or broken, and I was swept up in momentary panic. Liz was silent as she tried unsuccessfully to get a cell signal. Downward we continued. I pumped the brakes. My ears popped as we descended, and then, after what seemed to have been hours, but could have been 15 minutes, we descended below the fog, the rain went back to drizzle and the road was clear again.
Cell coverage was spotty. Liz searched for a nearby hotel, but kept losing the signal before she could confirm availability. Liz had a brilliant idea. When struggling with technology, call your youngest kid. Lucy was eager to help. She tracked us via the “Find My Friend” app on Lizzy’s phone.
“I can see where you are. There are seven hotels ahead of you in Hickory. I’ll check them.”
Five minutes later, she called back. “Nothing in Hickory. I’ll book you something at Charlotte Airport” “Nope, nothing there. Don’t worry, I’ll find you something.”
We continued on toward Charlotte. It was a longer wait this time for Lucy’s call. “I’ve tried all the hotels, all the inns, all the Airbnb's, there’s nothing anywhere in Charlotte, but I did find you a room in Huntersville. It’s a half an hour north. I’ll text you the info.” We thanked her profusely, but when we called to reconfirm the available room, the hotel told us that they had been full since the morning. We called Lucy back. She extended her search, and found another room, but that too was only “available” on the computer, not in reality. Once more, Lucy extended her search. There was a room at the Holiday Inn in Winston-Salem. We called and a weary desk receptionist gave us the same answer. “I don’t know why the computer is wrong, but we’ve had dozens of people drive here looking to book that room. It’s been booked since yesterday, but let me connect you to our reservation service, they may be able to help you.”
We were connected to an Indian call center. Padma was sympathetic to our plight. “Not to worry, I will find you something.” Padma worked with all the major hotel chains, and gradually extended her search - 10 miles from Charlotte, 20 miles, 30 miles. After a couple of false hits, she finally found us a room down in South Carolina. It was in the opposite direction, but we didn’t care. Padma painstakingly took down all our information. By the time she finished gathering the booking information, the room was gone. “I’m so sorry, but the room has already been booked, but I will find you somewhere else.” We stayed on the line for another 10 minutes. Finally, Padma came back on, we could almost hear the tears in her voice. She had been defeated.
We made adjustments. We scrapped the plans to attend chuch the following day in Concord, Iradell County, and instead decided to head there tonight and knock it off the list of Concords to visit. It was just after midnight when we arrived. I jumped out and took a couple of pictures of the Concord Presbyterian Church. Liz vetoed the idea of sleeping in the parking lot. It was too creepy in the dark.
We headed north, away from the worst of Helene’s aftermath. We drove through Virginia. We stopped for gas and checked local hotels. Everywhere there was a combination of seven to ten of the following generic, nearly identical, hotels: Sheraton, Residence Inn, Fairfield, Courtyard, Marriott, Hyatt, Hampton, Holiday Inn, Days Inn, Wyndham, Super 8. All were booked. We stopped in the appropriately named, “Bland, West Virgina.” It had all the same bland hotels and same bland fast-food franchises.
At 3:15 AM we pulled into The Fairfield Inn in Princeton, West Virginia. A scrap of paper taped to the front door read “NO ROOMS AVAILABLE.” We pulled around back and found a spot by a dumpster. After 18 hours on the road, we tilted the seats back and tried to sleep.
After a five-point turn, I headed slowly back the way we came. This was the third dead end we had faced, and the GPS had run out of options. Heading in the opposite direction was an 18-wheeler. I stopped and rolled down my window.
“Road’s closed ahead.”
The trucker tucked his chin to his chest and cursed.
“You might be able to turn on that gravel ahead.”
“Nope, I’ll have to fucking back up down this.”
He pulled off his red baseball cap and scratched angrily at his scalp.
There was a line of two cars stuck behind the truck, so I pulled up to each of them.
“I drove over the yellow tape this morning,” said the first driver, but I think she turned around.
“Are you heading to Boone? Trying to get to 421?” the second driver asked. “You can follow me.”
I trailed his taillights, back down the hill, past the entrance to the legendary Blue Ridge Parkway. This had been one of our previous dead ends. We had zig-zagged left and right into the opposite-bound lane as we dodged downed trees and piles of branches. Finally, we came upon a downed power line arching almost down to the pavement, so we had to retreat.
Following our guide, we reached the next entrance to 421. We could see traffic moving just 20 yards ahead, but once again, a thin yellow tape stretched across the road, mocking us. “You can see me, but you can’t get me!” A large black puddle about ten feet in circumference blocked our lane and ½ the opposite side. For a moment, I thought we could just skirt the puddle and be on our way. What was a little bit of tape? Then I looked again. It wasn’t a puddle. It was a cavernous hole. The road had almost completely washed away. I could see no bottom to it. The thought crossed my mind that there was still a third of the width of the road left… I decided to be smart and live instead.
“The next entrance is eight miles back,” shouted our guide through the rain.
We followed the rolling hills for about half an hour. A number of the intersections were blocked by police or fire vehicles; their red and blue lights glared in the otherwise pitch blackness.
We finally made it to the entrance of the four-lane state road. The stop lights were working here, and when the light turned green, we waved enthusiastically to our guide and turned right as our GPS demanded. We turned wrong. We found out later that the GPS towers were downed by the storm. There was no cell coverage. Google Maps and Waze were malfunctioning throughout the area. A couple of miles down the road, a car approached in my rearview mirror and flashed its high beams. I pulled to the right lane. It was our guide. He had seen our mistake and had turned around to set us on the right path. The GPS came back to life. “Arrival in 22 miles,” it read.
Once again, we returned to the stoplight. I was surprised to see the 18-wheeler with the red-hatted driver pull out in front of us. He had somehow managed to back his way down the hill to a suitable turning spot.
Earlier that day, the weather was deceptively calm. A storm had hit Yorktown the night before, but by morning, we assumed it had passed. The sun even peeked through as we left the Hornsby House Inn and made our way to Brunswick County Library, two hours away. There, the librarian had gathered everything she could about Concord, Brunswick County, Virginia. There wasn’t much.
I’ll expand upon our visit to The Concord Presbyterian Church in another entry, but we had a lovely stop at this idyllic 1826 church.
This was the one day that our plans were flexible. I hadn’t known how long we’d spend in Virginia before heading down to two Concords in North Carolina that were only an hour apart from each other. We had a long drive ahead of us, so I wanted to treat ourselves to a fine dinner and overnight. The Gideon Ridge Inn, though expensive, had an award-winning restaurant, and while it was an hour further west, oh…what the heck. It took forever to get through the voicemail labyrinth, but finally, we had our dinner, our bed, and our destination for the night.
We had seen signs of Hurricane Hellene: piles of brush, freshly cut log piles, linemen in bucket trucks, town maintenance workers regrading the side of the road. I was convinced that the storm had passed to our east, so we continued west. The Blue Ridge Mountains stood between us and our hotel. We started up the winding four-lane road. This was the road that eventually, after many diversions, ended in the one-inch yellow ribbon over the road.
Eventually, we made it back to Rt. 421, and while the patches of fog and sudden downpours made the driving difficult, we simply followed the glowing tail lights in front of us. It had been a long drive, but we were a mere 10 miles away when we drove down into a valley and turned off Rt. 421 onto Rt. 321 in the city of Boone, North Carolina.
Something was really wrong. The line outside the McDonald’s drive-thru extended from the parking lot onto the main drag for a quarter-mile. But Burger King was pitch black, cars were crammed in the Days Inn, and every other hotel. Many of the hotel parking lots were crammed with the bucket trucks of out-of-state linemen employed by electrical or telephone companies. Half the main strip of stores had power; the other half was eerily black. It was 9:30 PM, and the downtown traffic was heavy.
It had been over 12 hours since our breakfast, and we had skipped lunch, and by now, we had missed our swanky dinner reservation. The line of cars outside Chick-fil-A again extended onto the main road, but I noticed that no one seemed to be inside. We swung in, parked, and went right to the front of the counter to order our chicken sandwiches. The snaking drive-in line must have been for parents looking to bring some sort of food back to their cold, dark homes.
Liz, as always, was a trouper. Her “James Beard Award Winning” dining experience had been much reduced. At least we had room reservations 4 miles further down the road.
It was a harrowing four miles. Just outside Boone, all power, including the stoplights, was out. We made our way slowly out of town, up into the hills. In the distance, a police car had its flashers on. We were the only car going in either direction. Were the roads closed?
“Turn around,” said Liz. “It looks like they’ve closed the road.”
I slowed. The police car straddled a crossover between the lanes. Nothing was being stopped or redirected, so I continued on and exited toward Blowing Rock. The road meandered ever upward past a multitude of broken branches and an occasional downed tree. A few of the homes along the way had the glow of lights provided by an emergency generator. Most were just black shadows on an even blacker background. We crept past the restaurant. It was clear that they had been closed all day. No wonder they never answered their phone. We followed the signs upward toward the inn’s office, but by this time, we both knew that there would be no one around. We stepped out of the car, stretched our legs, and took stock of the situation.
I was planning to attend the Sunday service of The Concord Presbyterian Church in Iradell, about minutes away the following morning. At this point, it was clear that there would be no church service on Sunday. The new plan was to drive toward the larger city of Charlotte. There had to be a hotel there. “Let’s go to the airport,” Liz suggested. “They have thousands of empty rooms.” We checked online, but something was wrong with our devices. Our phones and computers were useless.
We slowly weaved our way back down from Gideon Ridge.
There were two routes back to Charlotte: backtrack 2 1⁄2 hours back over the Blue Ridge Mountains through the chaos we had just navigated, or take the four-lane, 90-minute direct route. I picked the latter option. “Let’s go back the way we came” opined Liz. I disagreed, and I picked wrong.
The road was eerily quiet. It was lightly drizzling, and all was silent except for the intermittent wipers. There was no traffic in either direction
Route 421 had been cut out of the side of the mountains. We weaved left and right, up slight rises and down long steep declines. The highway dipped as we came around a bend - ahead was a floating mat of fog. The car dove into the soup, or should I say chowder, and immediately our high beams blinded me. I flicked them off and searched for features defining the road. I hugged the middle of the right side. We had another lane to our right, but I couldn’t see it. Even the yellow double-lined dividing markers were concealed. All that I could see, all that kept us from crashing over the edge on either side of the highway was the faint flash of the cat-eyes reflectors. It felt like a video game- follow the yellow flashes and we’d be fine. Just as I started to regain my confidence, the rain started. It felt like we had entered a carwash. The windscreen was only clear for a fraction of a second as the maxed wipers struggled in vain. The pounding on the roof was deafening. There was no place to pull over; all we could do was slow down even further and follow the bending path of the cat’s eyes. Occasionally, one or two of the reflectors were missing or broken, and I was swept up in momentary panic. Liz was silent as she tried unsuccessfully to get a cell signal. Downward we continued. I pumped the brakes. My ears popped as we descended, and then, after what seemed to have been hours, but could have been 15 minutes, we descended below the fog, the rain went back to drizzle and the road was clear again.
Cell coverage was spotty. Liz searched for a nearby hotel, but kept losing the signal before she could confirm availability. Liz had a brilliant idea. When struggling with technology, call your youngest kid. Lucy was eager to help. She tracked us via the “Find My Friend” app on Lizzy’s phone.
“I can see where you are. There are seven hotels ahead of you in Hickory. I’ll check them.”
Five minutes later, she called back. “Nothing in Hickory. I’ll book you something at Charlotte Airport” “Nope, nothing there. Don’t worry, I’ll find you something.”
We continued on toward Charlotte. It was a longer wait this time for Lucy’s call. “I’ve tried all the hotels, all the inns, all the Airbnb's, there’s nothing anywhere in Charlotte, but I did find you a room in Huntersville. It’s a half an hour north. I’ll text you the info.” We thanked her profusely, but when we called to reconfirm the available room, the hotel told us that they had been full since the morning. We called Lucy back. She extended her search, and found another room, but that too was only “available” on the computer, not in reality. Once more, Lucy extended her search. There was a room at the Holiday Inn in Winston-Salem. We called and a weary desk receptionist gave us the same answer. “I don’t know why the computer is wrong, but we’ve had dozens of people drive here looking to book that room. It’s been booked since yesterday, but let me connect you to our reservation service, they may be able to help you.”
We were connected to an Indian call center. Padma was sympathetic to our plight. “Not to worry, I will find you something.” Padma worked with all the major hotel chains, and gradually extended her search - 10 miles from Charlotte, 20 miles, 30 miles. After a couple of false hits, she finally found us a room down in South Carolina. It was in the opposite direction, but we didn’t care. Padma painstakingly took down all our information. By the time she finished gathering the booking information, the room was gone. “I’m so sorry, but the room has already been booked, but I will find you somewhere else.” We stayed on the line for another 10 minutes. Finally, Padma came back on, we could almost hear the tears in her voice. She had been defeated.
We made adjustments. We scrapped the plans to attend chuch the following day in Concord, Iradell County, and instead decided to head there tonight and knock it off the list of Concords to visit. It was just after midnight when we arrived. I jumped out and took a couple of pictures of the Concord Presbyterian Church. Liz vetoed the idea of sleeping in the parking lot. It was too creepy in the dark.
We headed north, away from the worst of Helene’s aftermath. We drove through Virginia. We stopped for gas and checked local hotels. Everywhere there was a combination of seven to ten of the following generic, nearly identical, hotels: Sheraton, Residence Inn, Fairfield, Courtyard, Marriott, Hyatt, Hampton, Holiday Inn, Days Inn, Wyndham, Super 8. All were booked. We stopped in the appropriately named, “Bland, West Virgina.” It had all the same bland hotels and same bland fast-food franchises.
At 3:15 AM we pulled into The Fairfield Inn in Princeton, West Virginia. A scrap of paper taped to the front door read “NO ROOMS AVAILABLE.” We pulled around back and found a spot by a dumpster. After 18 hours on the road, we tilted the seats back and tried to sleep.
Photo credit: NPR
Concord, Iredell Co
