Ice, Ice, Ice...

So, you want to hear about our night!?!? We left Clarksville around 11:15a.m. (CST) to head up to Columbus, OH to start our Christmas holiday. We got all the way to Louisville and then we began to have some issues. When I drive through Louisville, I always take the Gene Synder Expressway instead of going through downtown because I've heard that it saves about a half hour (Jeff questioned my judgement this time and yes, I should have listened to him). About 8 miles from where we got off of the expressway and onto 71, the traffic just stopped. We inched along for about an hour until we decided to get off on the nearest exit and attempt some backroads. By this time, it was raining, but cars were beginning to slide on some icy patches. We managed to maneuver through some back roads and ended up getting back onto 71N about 40 miles or so out of Cincinnati. The freezing rain was coming down and we were moving at about 20-30mph. Suddenly, the traffic just stopped again. We sat in the same spot on the highway for over 2 hours. We heard on the radio that bridges were being shut down which completely eliminated our chances of getting out of Northern Kentucky since we have to go over the big bridge into Ohio. Sitting in a car can obviously lead to a severe case of boredom and annoyance! We pulled a Chinese fire drill because I was scared and sooo sick of driving. Every half hour or so, we were able to inch our car forward, but the area in front of us had already frozen over. We finally decided to get off on the exit which was right next to where we were "parked" and try to find the nearest hotel for the night. Our friend, Jon, was giving us traffic/weather updates on Google Talk and he helped to give us a few names of hotels nearby..or so we thought. We have a Garmin. Her name is Isabel and Isabel lied to us. We searched for hotels and many came up but the moment that we would pull up to where the hotels were supposed to be, there was nothing! After continuing on the road for about a half hour, we came to a neighborhood and parked cars everywhere. It looked like a graveyard of cars and they were parked all over the place on the side of the road, even facing the wrong way...probably the strangest thing that we had ever seen. Finally, we ended up in a familiar area south of Florence, KY and stopped to have some Skyline Chili at 10:00p.m.. We watched the local news and it was not looking positive to get all the way up to Columbus. In Florence, we found a hotel and camped out there for the night. We have a lot to be thankful for! I feel very thankful that we made it safely because we saw so many bad accidents and so many cars turned over. I am also thankful that I didn't kill Lucy since I was squeezing her soooo hard throughout all of this. So 24 hours later, we are now safe in Columbus, thank god!
Today we will be heading to lunch with some friends (since we missed dinner with them last night), heading to my Aunt Barbie's for the annual Christmas Eve, then up to Wadsworth to spend some time with Jeff's family.
We hope that everyone has an amazing Christmas!!