Our Transgender Trip Across the USA Started with a Flood in Kentucky!
By day, we saw rainbows, but things got rockier at night
From a distance, two people were walking towards us waist deep in water. The headlights of their abandoned car were still on. The 911 operator asked where we were. When I replied that I wasn’t sure, and started to look at our GPS to find more information, she told me faster than I could find out from my cell phone.
“You’re on highway 15, aren’t you? Is anyone left in the car?”
I repeated the question to the couple as they approached our car. They said they were okay and that no one else was left behind.
Prior to that, it had been a long but very nice day full of scenic mountain views. We were excited to see a water tower painted with rainbows in Virginia. Nearby, we had pulled out our lunchbox and had some nice curry croquets in an old graveyard in the middle of nowhere.
I had packed them to have something familiar from H-Mart to help combat the home sickness that hit me hard as soon as we reached the Virginia border. I don’t know if I’m ever going to see North Carolina again. I grew up there; the place is a part of me.
We’re driving across the country to move to a place that feels safer for us as a queer, trans, interracial polyamorous married couple. It’s painful to accept that a place that is a part of me doesn’t really want me, that no one in my biological family even asked for my new address. None of them know where we are going or what our trip has been like. That’s really painful, but it’s also a sign that it’s the right time to leave and start a new life elsewhere. It has been very hard to say goodbye to our chosen family there though.
I had initially entered a trip passing through Asheville, North Carolina into the GPS, thinking the path through Tennessee would be lovely, but my cell phone automatically switched me to a faster route through Virginia without me noticing. That shortcut took us right through a flood zone in the mountains of Kentucky around midnight. It was why we were on Kentucky Route 15 in time to call the police for the couple that was wading through the water towards us.
The 911 operator unceremoniously hung up on me, as soon as it was clear that everyone in the flooded car was alive. It seemed that rescue teams couldn’t do much until morning. This wasn’t a high priority in the middle of what we didn’t know was a much larger unfolding natural disaster. I understood this better later, when I learned that Highway 15 had been announced closed before we arrived, though there was no indication of this to a traveler who hadn’t read local news. This area was too remote for up-to-date orange cones and detour signs. Everyone here knows that you travel at your own risk at night.
A woman who seemed to know the couple from the washed out car was standing next to them. She assured me she’d already called the police with a similar response. As she spoke to me, the man who had waded through the water leaned against my car to empty his shoes.
“I don’t know where to go,” she smiled, understandably grateful to just be alive in that moment. Clearly still processing what had just happened, she didn’t seem to have much urgency. She wasn’t alone. There were no shortage of people around. The road was lined with cars that had decided to wait out the storm. Having seen all of the fallen trees and cracks in the road, we were worried about falling rocks. It didn’t feel safe to us to wait the storm out.
We were ready to get out of there as soon as possible, so we decided to risk leaving immediately. This involved dodging several fallen trees and driving through some standing water that could have easily had similar results for us. There were also piles of wood that looked like they could have belonged to someone’s home just lying along the road.
I could see now why our parents always insisted on keeping paper maps in the car. Our phone GPS wasn’t prepared for a flood and the signal was understandably unreliable. We instead relied on signs to find the larger highway. Around 3am, we finally made it safely to our B&B in a college town in Kentucky. Whew!
Later, when I told James Finn about it, he sent this article showing the full scope of what was happening around us. It made me feel all the more grateful to have made it through the mountains safely.
I’m also glad that we built in a day to rest, only expecting ourselves to drive about an hour after our trip through the mountains. We really needed that time. Wish us well as we continue our journey moving from the South of the United States to the West!
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