Home Again, Finally

This evening, we had our first measurable snowfall, just as the temperatures plummeted from 31f to 19f.  When this occurred, we were about 35 miles from home on our return from our nearly a week of family and friends visitation and we were in 2 cars, as part of our visiting was to go from Virginia Beach, to Vienna, VA on our way home to pick up my car that we loaned to our son's family for the holidays.  About 10 minutes into the storm, chaos began on I-81, with a pickup truck accident and fire, then a multivehicle accident a few hundred yards farther along and dozens of tractor trailers that couldn't climb the icy snow coated road, so traffic slowed to a literal 3 mph, then stopped.  My car was critically low on fuel as we approached this mess with intentions to stop and get fuel just where the first accident occurred.  As we inched along, the fuel gauge needle continued to creep farther and farther into the red.  Just as I feared that I was going to run out of gas, causing further havoc on the interstate, the trucks who couldn't get up the hill were spreading out allowing the cars to slowly weave through them and get off the exits.  My Honda has a 14 gallon tank, it took 13.6 gals at the pump. Sigh of relief.  We only saw one more accident after leaving the interstate, but those 35 miles took us 2 hours to complete.  Oh, and to add insult to this situation, the check engine light came on shortly after fueling and I just spent an arm and leg having the 120,000 mile servicing done.  That is just going to have to wait for another day.