Canyonland and Back Tour: Tornadoes! What Next

Bruce's Report:

Bruce reports that after leaving Gettysburg, they have their sights on getting home. Today and tomorrow will be driving days with a plan to make it home before the forecasted rain for the Boston area.

Doug's Report

Jack & I (The Rescue Team) got an early start today after stopping at a local NAPA store to get a battery for the emergency brakes on the trailer. With today being Saturday we figured it would be ab easy day of driving and we would be in Memphis late afternoon.

Traffic was reasonable until we got into Knoxville and noticed lots of traffic and cars loaded with party type people and lots of orange T's. It had to have been a Tennessee football game. It didn't last long and before were back up to speed. The weather was looking a little more threatening and after passing through Nashville the skies opened up and it poured for a short time.

We continued on but eventually traffic came to a stop. And we could see trees down on the side of the road. As we slowly made our way more trees could be seen down and the CB was talking about truck blown over and fatalities (this report was false). Ambulances and very large tow trucks were being brought in. I-40 was then closed and we had to turn around before we could actually see all the damage. We did see one truck that had it windshield blown out, so that was not a good sign.

We sat in traffic for over two hours before we were able to turn around. We got off the highway at the first exit and tried to get around the damage and it was obvious that the tornado caused wide spread damage and power outages. We got stuck in more traffic tie ups since the small roads couldn't handle the extra traffic form the highway.

Eventually we got going again and made it to a hotel in Jackson, TN, after about 4 hours of delayed traffic. Needless to say we did not make it to Memphis to retrieve the Model A.

That will have to wait until tomorrow morning.