Home Again, Home Again, Jiggidy Jigg

Surreal moment of the day: Rocketing down I-5 at 35 miles an hour, looking to the right and noticing that we’re PASSING someone.

In case you haven’t heard, we’re getting a bit of snow out here. It’s always nice to get some snow in the Portland area, since we hardly ever do, but I have to admit it was kind of nerve-wracking to drive from Olympia to Portland in constant snowfall.

We basically just dropped our speed to around 45 MPH, and stayed behind semi trucks as much as possible. Their tracks were frequently the only indicator of where to drive in the road, so 3-lane freeways were reduced to single lanes. The funny thing was that the truckers obviously didn’t have much of a better idea where the lane edges were because every 30 seconds or so, you’d feel the stay-awake bumps on the lane markers go under your tires.

It wasn’t too bad, though, all things considered. The car worked great with the new brakes that Mr. Stockman put on the rear wheels, and the windshield wipers were working again, which was good or we wouldn’t have been going anywhere. We had a good Seattle radio station on, which kept reception all the way from Tacoma to Kelso, at which point we finally had to tune into a Portland station (not as good).

It was nice and toasty inside the car, and we even made a nice stop at a rest area, where we took advantage of the free coffee, cocoa and cookies.

We only saw one actual wreck, though admittedly that was like five cars involved. All the others were just single cars which had driven off the road.

All said, it wasn’t bad, but we’re definitely glad to be home.