The Long Icy Road

In the morning we left New Orleans and began to make our way to Asheville NC where 3 of my good friends live, planning to spend about a week in their company. We still had a couple weeks until we needed to be in Florida, so we were in no rush at all, happy to spend the time with friends we hadn't seen for years. We took the main highway this time from New Orleans to Baton Rouge then took back roads up to Vicksburg Mississippi where we visited the National Military Park and toured the civil war battlefield of the siege of Vicksburg. The driving tour

was about 15 miles long and took us a couple hours to complete after all the stops we made along the way. Near the end of the tour they had an outdoor exhibit of a sunken ironclad boat that had been raised and restored which was awesome to see. I had visited this park once before as a kid with my Mom and Russ and at the time the ironclad was still not open to the public because they had not completed the restoration on it yet. It was fun to be

able to walk in the ships hallow halls trying to imagine what it must have been like in its functioning years or as it was hit by a torpedo and slowly sinking to its watery grave. All along the trail at Vicksburg the weather continued to stay cold and cloudy. At the visitor center the park rangers warned us about freezing rain coming and said that the roads would be real bad suggesting we should just find some place to rest for the night. Being the well traveled road warriors that we are and having a whole day of driving planned, we didn't take much heed to this advice and hit the road hoping to make it to somewhere around Birmingham Alabama then finding a place to park the van for the night. As it turned out, we only made it about 30 miles down the road when we realized we could go no further. The rain began to freeze to the windshield as we pulled into Jackson Mississippi where we found cars spinning off the road everywhere. There were so many accidents and they were all so bad that the cops could only attend to about a quarter of them, leaving the rest to fend for themselves in the freezing ice. Entire freeways were deserted because there were accidents completely blocking all traffic on all the on-ramps including a semi that jackknifed blocking all lanes of traffic. With no cops around and all the tow trucks already busy, the cars stuck behind this scene could do nothing but wait. Luckily our road was clear for the moment, but we thought it was best to pull over for a while, get some food and hopefully wait out the storm. After a cold meal at Cracker Barrel we again tried out the freeway, making it another 3 miles before coming to a complete, unmoving stop. Admitting defeat we pulled off the road and spent the night in a Motel 8 shielding ourselves from the freezing rain.

Since the weather thwarted our plans for a long drive the day before, this meant that we had double the driving on Friday if we still planned to make it to Asheville by the night. Luckily for us there wasn't much in the rest of Mississippi or Alabama that attracted us, leaving the road clear before us. When we left the comforts of our hotel room in the morning there was literally a sheet of ice encasing CJ. After warming her up a bit and scraping off all the windows we began cautiously down the road expecting them to be covered by ice as well. To our surprise, the

roads weren't bad at all and we were able to cruise along at a decent speed. We drove most of the morning and arrived about noon in the small Alabama city of Scottsboro, home of the Unclaimed Baggage Center. Katie had been super excited about visiting this store ever since we stayed with her friend Sarah in Nashville. The store is comprised of stuff gathered from airports and train stations all over the world that has been left behind and not claimed by anyone. The owners of the store have set up deals with the airlines to purchase the abandoned suitcases, not knowing what lies inside, then selling virtually everything at this

one store in Alabama. New bags of unclaimed luggage arrive daily and they continually restock the shelves with their newest finds. Its a pretty cool concept and it was amazing to see the things that people had not claimed once left behind. There were racks of standard traveling equipment like cameras, ipods, dvd's, clothes, books, and laptops along with the not so standard, giant swords, wedding dresses, surf boards, golf clubs, weight sets, and baby carriages. The store was pretty interesting but was ultimately an excuse for Katie to do some shopping. While she browsed the store looking for deals on things she didn't need, I read the information boards and history about the place and

examined the showcases of the rarest finds left behind. After about an hour Katie checked out with some souvenirs and we again headed north. We stopped off at nearby Russell Cave National Monument where indians have been inhabiting the cave for all four stages of prehistoric culture. It is the only place in the US that this is known to take place and they have ongoing excavations uncovering new artifacts every month. After Russell Cave we spent the rest of the day driving up through Knoxville, over the mountains, and into Asheville arriving at my buddy Ryan's in the early evening. The ice on the roads made driving down the mountains quite strenuous and I was extremely happy to not have to deal with icy roads for at least a couple of days. That night we went out downtown to meet up with Jimbo and Jake and we spent the night bar hopping, burning off some stress from the drive.