Day 52: Adventures in Snowland.

Wednesday, November 29th

I have had just about enough of this adventure. After a wonderful, relaxing holiday weekend we were supposed to come home on Tuesday with no problems right?

Wrong.

It all started Monday after the Seahawks game. We left the parking garage at 9:30 and immediately hit traffic on I-5. The freeway was one huge ice rink, cars stopped on the side of the road, and some abandoned in the road. It took us about an hour to go from the south end of Northgate Mall to the north end. Yeah, that's less than a mile. We were stuck behind a bus and next to a semi, and were inundated with the smell of exhaust the whole time. Around the north end of Northgate the semis started spinning their tires. We were in Jesse's Durango (thank God), and he was able to squeak through 4 semis just sitting in the road.

After navigating that mess, we had "clear" roads ahead, but we still had to drive at a snail's pace because of the ice. Pretty soon after the Northgate mess we came up on a jack-knifed articulated bus and broken down semi which Jesse had to squeeze between. The freeway was a mess! We saw a bus backward up an incline, and more broken down cars and semis than I could count. Apparently the other freeways and highways were even worse though, because the news stations didn't really mention I-5.

We came up on more brakelights in Edmonds and decided to get off the road and look for a hotel. Fortunately Hwy 99 was pretty much free and clear and we decided to just push on through. We got in the door at 1:15 am, almost 4 hours after leaving Seattle. From what I hear, we were lucky, though. It took some people 6 or more hours for similar distances.

Tuesday we decided to make the trip back home. It was sunny and nice, and although it was chilly we figured it'd be okay to come back. Our trip up was uneventful for the most part until we got into our town. I slipped a little on the off-ramp and another few times before we got home, but it didn't matter because we were about to be home in our warm apartment and our own beds.

Wrong again.

I walked in the door and realized that our power was out. Crap. I guess it had been out for a while because our fridge stunk and our milk was warm! We called Clint's sister and decided to crash with her for the night. This morning we finally braved our commute back home and I slipped on the ice a little more. Fortunately this time the power was on and we had a chance to buy groceries.

Now we're just enjoying our heater and waiting for the next snowstorm that will be arriving tonight!

I've had as much adventure as I can take for the rest of the year.

Oh, and PS- The game was freakin' awesome, but extremely cold. Like Clint said, this all would've been a lot worse if the Seahawks had lost!