WILLIAMSTOWN - Travelers headed home Sunday after spending the Easter holiday with family and friends.
Many stopped at the West Virginia Welcome Station at Williamstown off Interstate 77 to stretch their legs, use the facilities, change drivers, get a snack, let the kids run off some of the sugar rush from Easter candy and do the other things to help their trips go more smoothly.
Rick Ramsvell was traveling home to Orrville, Ohio, south of Cleveland, after spending a week of spring break with his family at Oak Island, N.C. He was estimating another couple of hours on the road from Williamstown.
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Photo by Brett Dunlap
Rich Patrick of Louisville, Ohio, near Canton Sunday looks at a wall map of the area at the West Virginia Welcome Station at Williamstown. Patrick and his wife were heading home Sunday after a weeklong trip to Gatlinburg, Tenn.
"We are anxious to get back," he said. "The kids go back to school (today) and I got to go back to work (today)."
Rich Patrick and his wife were traveling from Gatlinburg, Tenn., and heading home to Louisville, Ohio, around the Canton area.
From Williamstown, he estimated they still had around three hours before they reached home. They were down in Tennessee for a week where he was doing photography and his wife was doing quilting while staying in a cabin in woods.
Traffic was not especially heavy or crowded along I-77.
"The traffic has not been heavy or lite, about the same as it usually is," Ramsvell said.
Patrick said there were never any lulls or periods where it was standing still.
"The traffic has been steady," he said. "It was flowing fine.
"It never slowed down."
Some travelers did not think many people had started for home by 4 p.m. Sunday which was one possible reason traffic was moving so steadily. Some expected the traffic to pick up into the evening hours once people started making their way home. Some people may only have a few hours to travel so they were going to head back in the early evening.
The information desk at the Welcome Center was closed Sunday for the holiday so information on the number of travelers throughout the week and the weekend were not readily available.
Larry Sumy was traveling home to Akron, Ohio, after spending the holiday weekend in Belington, W.Va., with his girlfriend's family.
He, too, commented that the traffic on the interstate "was very light." We was expecting to be on the road for at least a couple more hours.
They had stopped to take a break and move around a little bit. The first part of the trip involved a lot of winding roads which was difficult for some in their party prone to motion sickness, but things have improved since getting on the interstate.
Sumy's girlfriend, Vickie Donavan, was expecting traffic to be bad.
"It has been good," she said. "I figured it would have been bad today, but it hasn't been."
