The drive home

Day one on the road we got as far as Portland, OR. The heavy rain and snow on the i5 was making it hard to see the road so we thought we'd call it a night. We stayed at the Marriot downtown which was pleasant and reasonably priced. We had dinner at Jake Crawfish nearby which was also something I'd do again.

The following day we set out again toward Eugene planning to visit King Estates vineyards. Unfortunately the amount on snow on the roads in town made us rethink a foyer onto smaller back roads and we instead made our way out to Florence on the 128 highway. We thought the weather would be milder closer to the water. It was true, though we had no idea that we had a mountain pass covered in snow and ice between us and the ocean. Once in Florence our "mild weather" was actually a hail storm. We moved from that into intermittent blizzards which meant we had horizontal snow and limited visibility most of the way to Eureka. Jessica took over the snow driving which I was very glad of since she's a snow-driving pro (she prefers to be referred to as a super star actually). We could have called it a night at Eureka at 9:30pm but we were temped to just givver and finish the night in our own beds so we just drove all the way here. We again found ourselves in a blizzard in Redwood National Park and were seeing blowing snow all the way to Sonoma County. Not the California I remember driving from before Christmas!

Now that we're here in Fairfax again, it's sunny and about 12 degrees in the day time and 8 at night - cold! But spring is starting and the hills are green. It's good to be back.