Four strangers drove home together through snow storm after flight was canceled

'A stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet.'

Four strangers whose flights were canceled joined together and drove more than 1,000 miles through a massive snow storm to get home in time for a special time of the year.

Natalie Kulka, 23, had her $400 flight from Tampa, Florida, to Cleveland, Ohio, canceled during the bomb cyclone that hit much of the US during Christmastime.

While devastated, Kulka made a joke about whether anyone else on the flight would join her in driving home. To her surprise, three equally unlucky travelers were up for the journey.

‘You never know when you might need the help of the people around you,’ said Kulka. ‘I hadn’t seen a lot of my family for over two years and I wanted to get home for the holidays and I wouldn’t have been able to make it.’

Kulka, Sarah, Kevin and Nick all flew to Nashville at 9.45am the day before Christmas Eve and then rented a Toyota Corolla. But the sedan was not equipped for the snowy, icy and deadly conditions on the road.

‘We just started driving but the ice was awful, we were having to drive at 5-10 miles an hour,’ said Kulka.

‘The further North we went the worse it got.’

After driving for 20 hours and getting halfway to their destination, the four were able to rent an SUV in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. They kept driving north but could not get further due to the storm conditions in Cincinnati, Ohio.

To get to Cleveland, they rerouted to go south towards Kentucky around 1am on Christmas Eve. Once they got to Kentucky, they headed north to Indianapolis, Indiana, and finally reached Cleveland at 10am on Christmas Day.

‘The adrenaline got us through and we got to know each other along the way. We were very wary that we didn’t have suitable snow clothes and we had the approach to take it slow and steady,’ Kulka said.

‘Lots of people crashed and many people froze to death in their cars, it was terrible.’

Their canceled flights cost around $400 each and were refunded, the first car rental cost $175 and was also refunded and the SUV cost $400 total.

After completing the unexpected journey, Kulka concluded: ‘A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.’

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