Last weekend I attended my high school reunion in Gaffney, SC. Normally my route back to Cincinnati involves I-40 from Asheville, NC to Knoxville, TN. But when I hit Asheville Sunday morning, traffic was being routed up I-26 (a beautiful almost-new road) to Johnson City, TN and down I-81 from there.
This is the second time since we’ve been in Ohio that a slide has closed I-40. It’s a remarkable road through Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina and Cherokee National Forest in Tennessee. I had missed being caught in the slide by about 9 hours.
The picture here is from the Greenvile News web site in SC. Apparently the road will be closed for several months.
One of my good friends at the reunion wrote this after I sent him an email about the slide: “I remember I-40 through the Pigeon River Gorge very fondly. I used to drive that route coming down from Lexington in my Fiat. Top down…wind in my hair….pedal to the metal…and bright sun in my eyes. One time I sailed into one of the tunnels at about 80 mph and was confronted by total darkness. The lights in the tunnel were OFF that day, and I had temporary blindness from the sun, and my sunglasses were on, AND my headlights were off. How did we ever survive our youths?”
cleve callison’s blog 
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