Home Again

Good morning, my friends. Yes, I did say I was going to take a few days off from blogging while we get resettled at home, but our drive from yesterday deserved a post. Honestly, I can't remember when I've seen worse traffic. We decided to get our beloved Egg McMuffins for breakfast. There was a McDonald's nearby, and so it seemed a little like a breakfast celebration. The only thing missing was the champagne for our orange juice. 

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, traffic through Seattle is notoriously awful. It's even been listed in the top 10 US cities with the worst traffic. And so we timed our departure from Mt. Vernon to avoid rush hour traffic. Mt. Vernon is about 60 miles north of Seattle, and we figured to reach the area around 10:00 a.m.

The traffic was heavy, but nothing unexpected until just a few minutes after I took this photo. Then, everything came to a standstill. We inched along for FIVE HOURS between Seattle and Tacoma before traffic started moving again...a distance of 34 miles. It turned out to be a very bad accident involving three semi trucks and two cars. Here are a couple of pictures I swiped from Facebook. Four lanes of traffic were blocked.

Amazingly, no injuries were reported according to this article. As annoying as it was to be stuck in this mess, someone else was having a worse day than we were.

But that was only the beginning of traffic woes. Even after getting through Tacoma, we ran into stop-and-go (mostly stop...very little go) traffic for many miles afterward. On a trip that should have taken us 4-1/2 hours, we spent more than 9 hours before arriving home. Making matters worse, the delay would put us into Portland right during Friday rush hour there. 

Many years ago while traveling home from a camping trip, we got caught in a complete freeway closure from a wildfire burning off to the side of the road. After a delay of about two hours (on a 15-minute stretch), we reached the turn off for Longview, Washington. We decided to get off and take Oregon's Hwy 30 the rest of the way. Knowing we would only encounter more stop-and-go traffic in Portland, we decided to do the same thing again. 

From the turn-off, it was about a 20-minute drive to where we would cross the Columbia River on the Lewis & Clark Bridge.

That sign was a sight for sore eyes. Here's the bridge, if you can see it through our dirty broken windshield.

There's the river...I think we're going to make it.

And YAY!!! We're back in our home state!!!

We still had about an hour's drive to get home. As we passed through the little town of Rainier, I noticed this insurance office with quilt blocks on their storefront. Cool.

Finally, finally, finally, we made it the rest of the way. The kitties were pretty happy to be out of the RV and headed straight for the tall grass.

We didn't do a single thing after arriving home aside from walking around taking a look at things. All but one of our garden plants survived our absence. The bleeding heart didn't get enough water, and so it is fairly well cooked. No worries. We'll replace it. There are still a few blooming things in the hydrangeas, the echinacea, and the dahlias. Maybe there's more, but those are the three that spring to mind. I'll take pictures and show you in a day or two. 

As for the grass, I was expecting it to be waist high. As it turns out, it's only about knee high. This morning, I noticed a doe at the far end of the field, bedded down in the tall grass. Enjoy it while it lasts, little lady. In a few days, it'll be mowed down.

So that's all I have for you for now. I wasn't going to post, but I needed to vent about the harrowing drive home yesterday. It would have been good to be home under the best of conditions, but yesterday's terrible drive made it all the more gratifying.

Today I'll be unpacking the RV. When that task is finished, I'll need to take a stab at pulling some weeds. The weeds are so tall that I'm afraid my bucket o' weeds method won't be very productive. I'll probably set a one-hour timer, and do it in pieces that way. I expect it will take a couple of days to get them under control. We'll also need to do some grocery shopping. The house looks pretty good. I've deleted any housekeeping tasks from my calendar through the end of next week to give myself some time to settle in. 

Right now, I'm looking forward to getting back to my morning embroidery routine. When I last showed you the Raggedy & Friends project, I was working on the 9th of 21 embroidered blocks.

And that's where I'll start this morning. Probably I'll take a day or two off from here. There's much to do to get to a place that feels more normal. When you hear from me again, I'll be rested and relaxed and ready to do some sewing.