Schools out for the summer!!!!  On Friday, June 13th, Emma had her last day of 10th grade and we left early to head up to her dad's office. After I dropped her off, I was happy to discover that the traffic going back down 95 wasn't backed up.  I managed to make it back to the house before Matt got home from work.  I was excited because the weather was looking pretty good for the weekend.  Since Emma was with her dad, we'd definitely be skydiving - somewhere!

Earlier in the day, I did some research and tried to figure out which state was next on our list. There were a couple of drop zones in East Tennessee.  The closest DZ - Skydive East Tennessee - 400 miles away and Skydive Smoky Mountains was 428.  Since we would be arriving on a Saturday, I didn't bother to call ahead to make sure they were open.  I looked at the websites and both were active.

After a quick dinner, we packed the car and set out on the road.  Although it was to starting rain, things were going well until we got past mile 136 on 64.  The sky was getting increasingly darker, the winds were picking up, and the rain was coming down in buckets.  Lots of cars were stopped along the road, but I pressed on.  

At one point, it was so dark, that we couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of the car.  Matt said we were driving through an abyss and I felt like we'd entered some sort of vortex or black hole.  In my entire life, I had never experienced a darker sky or been in a more volatile storm. The intense weather seemed to last a long time, but we were driving slower so it's hard to say exactly how many miles it was before things started to improve.

Once we were out of the storm, my first thought was that we should have used one of our four video cameras to film the experience!  Dang!  I wish I would have thought of it sooner.  Oh well, maybe some day we'll have a dash cam!  Matt's been wanting one for awhile and they are getting cheaper.  Note to me:  Future Birthday Idea!

The rest of the drive on 64 wasn't bad, but when we got to the exit for 81 things came to a dead stop. We couldn't see an accident, but we used our phones to check for traffic incidents and discovered there was an accident just a few miles up the road.  We sat for so long that Matt eventually had to get out off the car to pee.  In all our trips, this has only happened exactly 1 time!  We were at a dead stop for nearly an hour.

When things finally got moving, it was slow going for awhile.  Eventually the traffic picked up and we were cruising along again, but it was getting late and we were tired of being in the car.  We used Priceline to find a room in Roanoke.  We ended up at the Sheraton Roanoke Hotel and Conference Center in a very nice room for $83.72.  Unfortunately, we were still 233 miles from the drop zone!