snow and travel

We live in a pretty dedicated desert, so there is not a lot of moisture any time.

That is not all bad, we avoid a lot of rainy days, and even when it is cold, we often do not get much if any snow.

But that is not true down the road a bit.

Tomorrow we are driving 250 miles up through the corner of Oregon to Washington State. Our daughter lives about a mile and a half into Washington State, so we won’t drive there a whole lot.

And they have snow big time. She told me they had a foot a few days ago and it has been snowing almost every day since. Even Linda in Portland reports 6 to 12 inches of snow. Portland is a hilly town and snow brings the whole town to it’s knees.

A storm passed through our area over the weekend and another one is not due until Wednesday, giving us a one day window to travel.

I suggested calling the trip off, or at least offered that for thought, but Deanna who lives the furtherest away was not impressed with my idea! Grandson David drove from Sacramento to Portland yesterday and said it was ok, but a little slower. Deanna will drive from San Francisco to Portland on Tuesday.

Linda in portland has a Jeep jeep with nice new snow tires and she is getting around pretty well. We were there once when there was 5 or 6 inches of snow. It was fun to drive along with Linda and watch Mercedes and Jags and more, stuck in the snow.

We have traveled this road between here and Walla Walla literally hundreds of times, and know the road well. What I don’t know is which driver who has never on snow before gets between me and a safe trip.

Once we were traveling along on compact snow base. I bought half a cord of firewood to put in the pickup for ballast, it worked well. We were going along at a fair speed and a SUV passed me going a good bit faster than us. I told Miriam that they were out of control but did not know it.

We had not driven 5 miles and saw them on the side of the road having slapped the guard rail enough to put out a SUV light, but enough to cause serious injury.

Funny I did not see them again that day.

We are taking our ancient (1992) Chevy Cavalier, but it is in good mechanical condition, has new tires that have been sipped. You can look that one up!

To all of us that will be traveling this week: be careful and slow down.