We had quite the time trying to get to Camp Sherman for Christmas. On Tuesday we were looking at the forecast and we decided it would be better to leave on Tuesday because there was supposed to a big snowfall on Wed. and we didn't want to get stuck in it. By Tuesday afternoon we had two options for getting out of Tillamook and heading east; we could either go down hwy 101 to Newport and then take hwy 20 through Corvallis (this hwy is also known as Tombstone Pass...not exactly what you want to be driving on in the middle of winter storm), or we could take hwy 6 into Portland to 217, to I5 to hwy 22. We figured that in normal driving conditions this would be about a 4 1/2 hour drive, so I anticipated it would take about 7 hours with the roads as they were.
Well, there were two things we did not take into consideration: 1) When we left Tillamook at 3:00 we would hit Portland rush-hour traffic at 5:00, on the busiest shopping/traveling day of the year. And 2) Even though I5 is a wide, straight highway, the Portland area only owns about 3 snowplows, which is not enough to keep a large, heavily trafficked road clear of snow and ice. We hit gridlock traffic on 217, and then again at Wilsonville, where they were trying to plow at the busiest travel time of the day. We literally traveled less than 1 mile in an hour. Once we passed Wilsonville things cleared up a bit, but it wasn't until Salem that the roads really got any better. We didn't get to Salem until almost 10:00 PM, so we stopped for some snacks, contemplated just finding a hotel for the night, but ultimately decided to just keep on driving. We figured that there would be no one on hwy 22, and it was true. We basically had the whole road to ourselves, which meant that we could drive in the center lane, where the ruts weren't so bad, and where we could take the corners better. It was a little scary thinking about the fact that if we slid off the road, no one may find us until the morning, but we trusted our Subaru and our driving skills, and so we made it to Camp Sherman just fine by 1:00 AM.
When we woke up on Wednesday morning we were glad we had done the drive on Tuesday, because it snowed all day Wednesday, and I don't know what the valley would have been like at that point.
So thank you for all your prayers! We are so glad to be here in Camp Sherman, enjoying a safe, white Christmas :) 
1 comment:
We're glad you made it safely and we're looking forward to hearing about your Christmas. It seems like just about everyone we know had a white Christmas this year!
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