Last night we left Bakersfield a little later than we’d wanted to. It just took so long to get everything loaded into the RV that I might need for 4 to 6 weeks.
I’d checked Map Quest and it said that the drive would be 16 hours so that would work well, we’d arrive today in Seattle and we could start inspections tomorrow morning. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to check further to see how much longer, if any, it would take to actually go via Arcata.
We stopped at a rest stop just before the bay area (San Francisco) as it is the last rest stop until an hour or so north. It was 2 a.m. and we knew that we couldn’t drive another 2 hours. We thought that we’d get up at 5am and miss the morning commute traffic into the city which we did.
We just flew right along but then we were in Clayton’s neck of the woods by 6:30 a.m. I first sent him a text message asking if he was awake but when I didn’t hear from him I called. Poor guy I woke him up but hey, he’s my son and I wanted him to meet us. He dutifully got up and met us at a local coffee shop for a little visit. And he was able to get into his work on time.
We then drove onto Arcata. Justin had decided to help for a week or so as his significant other is large with child and due to pop in about 3 weeks. We figured that Justin could get home fairly quickly from Seattle and at least could make enough to keep afloat for a month by working a week or so. As he and his family live on a very narrow street we thought that it would be more expedient to just meet for lunch. We met, ate lunch then threw his stuff in the RV and took off.
We were driving along minding our own business, claims were coming in and we were picking them up using the e-mail on the BlackBerry, Justin was getting the info, setting stuff up in the computer, I was still calling insured’s when we had phone service and finishing up the claims from home when there was no service when traffic stopped. We were on a two-lane road driving along the northern California from the coast to I-5 which runs up the center of the western states. We were driving border to cross into Oregon.
The long line started moving but stopped when we got to the front. According to the fire official a car had gone off the road into a ditch taking out a power pole at about 4:30 pm. Lines were on the ground and all kinds of emergency crews were on scene. This was about 6:30 pm. Traffic was being routed up a little hill on a narrow road and around the scene. We waited and waited then cars started coming down the hill, cars, cars and more cars. Finally the line ended and we thought we’d get to go, but then an official on the radio said nope, there were more cars coming, and sure enough there were lots more. Then another break, great. But no, a SUV had died in the middle of the whole thing and the official had to push it out of the way. Then there was a very long, long line of cars. Finally we got our turn. We got back on the main road and passed several miles of cars heading the way we just had come from and we felt smug.
It is late and we won’t make Seattle tonight but tomorrow is another day.
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