8-20-2017

8-20-17

250 miles

Lorena has been planning this trip for a year.  There is a full solar eclipse over Oregon on the 21st.  (Our anniversary). Traffic is supposed to be worse than anything ever in the whole wide world. (According to the ‘news’) We woke up early Saturday to be on the road by 5am.  The drive was good.  Something like a million out of state people are expected, and all of them are going home Monday.  We are staying at Lorena’s cousin Tracy’s place. We really enjoy it here.  A great view of the foothills of the Cascades, surrounded by farmers and ranchers, and far away from life in the big city.

We will take in the eclipse, then wrap things up and get on the road.  I expect the freeways to be really bad.  I plan on going east of Mt. Hood, across the Hood River bridge, and east of St. Helens and Mt. Rainer.  It will add almost 2 hours to the trip, but if we don't have to sit in miles of stopped traffic in the big cities, I’ll take it.  

The truck has stopped using oil.  Apparently, it likes the 15W40.   

Addendum 10-20-17

We left Lacombe around 5pm and went up 213 to Portland and traffic looked great so we got on the freeway. Looked really great until we hit I-5 above Vancouver.  Dead stop.  We let google tell us what route to take to avoid traffic and ended up on mystery side roads for a lot of the trip.  The freeway was basically dead slow from Vancouver to Chehalis.  Google tells us we saved 2 hours on the side roads.  We still didn’t get home until after 2am.  Mental note:  that drive sucked.