Let it Snow!. . .but please wait 'til we get home

Yesterday we girls (Julianne, Miri, Yara, and I) headed to the big city (Eugene) to catch some of the after Christmas sales and enjoy one last hurrah before school starts again tomorrow. Our van is in the shop being repaired from when I got rear-ended back in September. In its place we have a Pontiac Sunfire, which is just a step up from what the Amish drive. It has manual windows, manual door locks, no cruise control, and you can't even pop the trunk from inside the car. (You can however, pull the back seat forward and crawl into the trunk, which the kids think is uber cool.)

Here on the coast we've had lots of hail lately, and it is generally colder in Eugene than here, so I checked three different websites to make sure we wouldn't run into any snow over there. I also called my friend who lives there and had her check her local weather forecast. All systems were go. However since it was rainy, I told the girls we'd come home early because I didn't want to drive home in bad weather and in the dark.

We had finished at the second mall at 3:00, so we decided we had time to stop by Old Navy before heading home. At 3:45 we walked out the door of Old Navy to find it snowing hard. I said, "Girls, get in the car. We're heading home now." Normally we come home by taking I-5 south for about 45 minutes to Drain and then cutting over to the coast. However, in light of this sudden snowstorm, I thought it would be better to cut directly over the coast on Hwy 126, coming out at Florence.

It continued to snow as we left Eugene, but it was wet and melting as soon as it hit the road. It was still daylight and I was thinking we were getting started just in time to stay ahead of the real weather. Then we came to the accident. . . .

At first we didn't know it was an accident because we were behind who-knows-how-many cars at a dead stop. As we sat there waiting for the traffic to clear, it started snowing harder. There was no rain mixed in with the snow now. . . . just big, beautiful flakes (zillions of them) falling silently to the ground. It was absolutely beautiful, and my biggest disappointment was that I'd left my camera by the door at home.

There were several inches of snow on the ground, on the trees, and by the time we finished sitting there for an hour, on the oncoming lane of the highway too. Yara (from Israel) said, "Now this is America!" It's not every CR that will get stuck in a snowstorm so her students can experience real America!

Finally, when traffic started moving again it was starting to get dusk. There was a lot of snow, slush, and I assume ice on the roads by then, so I took it very slow. The traffic ahead of me pulled away much faster and got so far ahead that I couldn't even see them anymore, so I became the leader of 50 pairs of headlights behind me. I went 20-25 mph for about 30 miles, and only a little faster after that. It's 60 miles from Eugene to Florence, and it was snowing for all but the last 10 miles. Then the snow turned to rain for the rest of the trip home.

What is normally a 2.5 hour drive took us 4.5 hours, but we made it home safely. This morning I looked at tripcheck.com to see how much snow was on the road now. It says "A large slide has blocked the hwy. The hwy is closed."

It is so good to be home.