A Trip To Remember

There is snow and Portland and you know what that means, hijinks!

But let's go back to the beginning. We woke up with a start at 7:38 am MST. "No," I screamed inwardly, "It can't be time to get up yet!" I got up, padded through my parent's house to find another clock to confirm. Drat. Not only was it time to get up, we were late. So I forced Moose out of bed and we loaded up and were on the road at 8:40 MST.

At 11:40 am PST were arriving in Spokane for lunch, gas and a chat with our cousins. I pulled out my purse and found that the small bottle of coconut oil I keep as a moisturizer had melted into liquid thanks to Moose's attempt to keep me warm by roasting me with the car heater. I set it on top of the car to cool down while we ate.
At 12:40 we were on the road again headed for Portland or bust. I stopped a little short behind a bus and my coconut oil went flying off the car. We laughed hysterically and Moose retrieved it. We thought "Boy, will we remember this tip as the time I left the coconut oil on top of the car!" Cute.
At Tri-cities I was very sleepy so I stopped for more gas and to let Moose drive and wash the windows. Oh, yeah did I mention that our windshield wiper fluid was frozen until Hood River?

Since our cell phones don't work in Montana we had forgotten to charge them before we left. I had no power and Moose had one tiny bar. If only we had remembered to charge them up, we might have received some of the warning calls.
So at 4:30 we are getting a little excited, there looked like rain up ahead but there was just a little more than an hour left of the drive and there was a house fire in The Dalles visible from the road, surely it would be big news on the TV tonight. Around Hood River we hit snow. It was bad for Oregon and I was afraid they would close the road for the 2 inches of snow. The road wasn't closed and at 5:30 I thought to call La Keira to see about snow in Portland. Yes, there was a little snow on the ground about and inch. I guess she hadn't listened to the news.

We came into Portland still excited about our quick trip and being home for a reasonable dinner. Then we realized, it is 6 pm rush hour, in Portland, in a snowstorm. An hour later we had made it to the Lloyd Center Exit and had dinner at Red Robin. Everything was packed like a parking lot and 26 was closed, there isn't really an alternate route. We watched the snow fall in huge clumps and discussed the irony of driving 1,400 miles to Montana and back with no snow only to be snowed in at the Red Robin 10 miles from our house.

At 8:15, our bellies full we piled back into the car for another hour and fifteen minutes of inching our way home the remaining 10 miles. Really, waiting it out at Red Robin was genius even though we didn't get home until 9:30 pm PST, I don't think it would have been any faster had we stayed our course on the freeway, and we would have been hungry, cranky and have exploded bladders.


Blessings: We were prepared for a long trip, most people were just out in town and blindsided by the storm and didn't get home for hours and we had TONS of weight being loaded up with all the spoils of Christmas.


Boba Fett put it best. "When it snows in Portland people lose their minds." It wasn't the snow that was the problem it is the complete lack of ability to drive in snow AND the fact that there are only a few major roads in and out of Portland. There isn't anyway around it you have to go through it.