We were driving home from Ohio after our Labor Day spent with my wife's niece and her family. It was getting dark and started to rain. We were coming up on a Cracker Barrel Restaurant and I asked my wife if she wanted to stop and eat there. Which we did. Getting back on Interstate 80 as we approached the Ohio/Pennsylvania line traffic started to bunch up. Both lanes were solid. I was in the left lane and mentioned to my wife that I was probably in the wrong lane as the right lane started to move faster than the left lane. I had a semi come up beside me and I noticed his lights flashing on his trailer. I realized that he wanted over in our lane so I backed off from the semi in front of us leaving room for him to get over. I couldn't see ahead because of the truck in front of me but when I looked in my right rearview mirror I saw that there were no vehicles in the right lane. As we got closer to the line we saw flares and a lot of flashing lights from emergency vehicles. Police, ambulances, fire trucks and wreckers. We finally saw a semi off of the road on the right jackknifed and the cab looked like the Incredible Hulk turned it into a ball of twisted metal and fiberglass. When we got home and watched the news we learned that the wrecked semi driver was on drugs and drinking alcohol, went off the road, hit two trees and a ditch which caused him to jackknife. He survived but the woman in the sleeper compartment had died.
Had we not stopped to eat there is a possibility we could have been involved in the accident or might have seen it happen.
This is a shot of the sky when we came out of the restaurant. We are both grateful that we weren't harmed and we were reminded that we have no control over our lives. We all could lose them in the blink of an eye.
