Bend, Oregon Blizzard

December

A long weekend in Bend, Oregon, for sunshine was a great idea. Leaving REI to head back to Seattle, huge snowflakes began. Entering the highway, it was white-out conditions. Rodger and Alicia could not drive over Mt. Hood; they would have to use a different, unfamiliar route. The Audi SQ7 was great in snow and the mountains, but these unfamiliar, remote roads from Bend to Seattle weren’t highways; they were two-lane unplowed roads.

His GPS said to go straight; the road curved, and he followed it.

“Rodger, you were supposed to go straight!”

“I only saw snow; there were no tire tracks!”

“We have to follow the GPS. Turn around.”

The road had no traffic and no towns; it was a white landscape covered in snow with no landmarks and low visibility. Blizzard driving is nerve-wracking on a known route; this road curved down into valleys, there was a river on the left, and then it climbed into the mountains.

“How can this be better than driving over the Mt Hood?”

“The lower elevation, maybe?” She was staring out the window, trying to see through the flakes that obscured their sight further than four feet in front of them. He drove thirty miles an hour as a semi-truck passed in the opposite direction.

After hours of nail-biting, slow driving with no one in front or behind, they reached a familiar rain-covered highway.

“The Columbia River!! There is it, thank God. I’ve never been so happy to see some rain!”