A view of Stevens County from Kristi's camera

We have experienced some heavy duty traveling in the last week or so. I suppose that one may expect these kinds of things at this time of year if one finds it necessary to move from one location to another. In spite of that, I found surprises in our most recent travels, and travails.

This is from one who has logged thousands of miles on icy highways with the snow blowing sideways across the windshield, blinded behind the wall of snow behind trucks hurtling down the icy highways at 60+ mph, and passing them to find vision once again on the other side.

This is one small example of our driving experiences. We always survived, although there were times when I was thankful that we did.

We almost always begin a long drive with a look at the weather forecast, and we did that. We knew that we almost certainly would be driving in snow at some time or other. I remembered that I could need gloves if we had to put on chains. I actually went back into the house and looked for my favorite gloves. I didn't find them.

We began our trials with a drive over Snoqualmie Pass headed for Colville last Saturday, November 20th. Other than being a long day after a night of playing music the night before, and a night of playing again after driving for 7 hours, it was not a problem. I was a bit crabby when we arrived, but I seemed to get over it before we began to play, and the night went well, in spite of a tiny crowd.

This trip was mostly to visit Kristi's cousins. It is a long drive, and we worked Friday night here in Tacoma as well. We stayed with her cousin Jack, and his wife Jane on Saturday night. This is one of Kristi's many cousins who live in the Colville vicinity. They have a nice house just outside of Colville. Jane is a very nervous little woman who talks constantly, and says she's been diagnosed with a nervous disorder. She is nice though, and I always find it interesting to listen to Jack talk about growing up on the dairy farm with his brothers, or dentistry in Colville. There are plenty of interesting stories. Jack is a retired dentist, and a habitual farmer. He's a friendly guy with no pretense. I always enjoy listening to him talk about his life, as I often do when someone has an experience so different from my own to put forth. They have purchased almost our entire catalogue of recordings. I wonder what they think of all of that? Jane put cookies, and instructions on where to find soft drinks in the room we stayed in. We slept well in the ancient bed provided.

The next morning we met the grandchildren, Gary, and Lane who were visiting Jack, and Jane, and had a waffles and strawberries breakfast before loading the car with computer and guitars and heading down the to club where we'd left our P.A., and loading that before we saddled up the Saturn wagon and headed for Rice, WA. That's approximately where the rest of Kristi's cousins live. Kristi's family used to spend Thanksgiving at the "Esvelt Ranch" every year. It is where her father was raised, and has some kind of a rootedness feel to it for her.

There are three households out there, and currently they all take part in running the "ranch". It is a beef cattle ranch. The son of one of the cousin's (Fred), Ryan, had an accident and broke his back in September. He is paralyzed, and currently living in Spokane so the brothers are all coming together (Bob, Chris, and Fred) to operate the ranch for him.

Three of her cousins live on the ranch, and it provides each of them with their own unique lifestyle. Of course life drives one's lifestyle like the landscape drives a riverbed, and the Esvelt cousins are no exception to those rules. In September Ryan, the son of Fred Esvelt, had one of those huge rolls of hay that look like giant marshmallows when they're wrapped in plastic run over him. It wasn't wrapped in plastic, but it broke his back, and paralyzed him with it's great weight when it rolled over him. It left him in a field for two hours alone, staring up at the sky before he was found.

The medical expenses are literally unbelieveable. He had medical insurance, but he has already run through that coverage. The community turned out for a benefit for him, and with an attendance of around 500 persons (Rice has a population of 300), they raised $30,000 for him. That's a big help, but only a drop in the bucket of expenses needed.

The cousins who live on the ranch are Bob, and his wife Becky; Fred, and his wife Wendy; and Chris, and his wife Patty. We stayed at the home of Bob, and Becky. It's a great house with a view of Lake Roosevelt. Bob & Becky had Fred & Wendy, and Chris & Patti over for dinner so we got to spend some time with all of them. They're all interesting, and warm people. It was a good time. All of the homes of the cousins are great places to be. Fred has built a house on the other side of the road directly above the lake, and Bob has a house that was already existing in an unfinished form, which he finished himself.

Here's a picture of The Ranch Esvelts

We left on Rice on Monday morning in a light snowstorm after a short visit with cousin Bob Esvelt, and dropping by the home of Fred and Wendy Esvelt before we left. The roads were frozen, and it was two hours to I-90 from Rice. You can see what the conditions are by the picture at the top of the blog. We hit I-90 at Ritzville, still snowing, but the highway was pretty much bare, and wet.

By the time we got to Snoqualmie pass it was snowing like hell, blowing about 30 mph, and at the bottom of the pass the news was that we would be able to make the pass with just winter tires. That sounded like what I expected to hear, and when I heard it had no intention of doing anything else. By the time we got just below the pass we were pushing 5" of snow on the road (or more), and we were in a blizzard. My windshield wipers got iced up, and I really could only see a blur in front of me. I had tire cables, and had no gloves. It was blowing about 30 mph, and, did I mention it, snowing like hell. I managed to get the cables on, and we got over the pass, but it was still snowing like hell. I opened the windows on both sides of the car so I could tell where I was in the road. I had a tiny space in the windshield that I could see anything through. I could see the blurry lights of a truck that was running in front of me. I could not tell that I was across the pass except that we were going downhill. I suspected, but didn't take that for granted. I consulted Kristi for her opinion, and her opinion was that we were now really headed downhill, and had crossed the pass. That's how little you could see. About the time we hit North Bend, I realized I had lost one cable, and the other one came apart so I stopped in the snow and removed it from the tire. I didn't want to try to run over Tiger Mt. with no help on my tires, so decided to take a chance on Seattle. It snowed all the way into Seattle, but no big deal in the total scheme of the story.

Well, that was the biggest mistake I've made in awhile. Although traveling was easy, there was a lineup to get on I-405, so we skipped that route, and decided to take I-5 back to Tacoma. I hadn't been listening to any news, and didn't know what to expect. Traveling was no problem until we got to I-5. After we passed the old Rainier Brewery building the traffic stopped. For us, it never did start to move again in any significant fashion. We did manage to get to the south end of Boeing Field after about 7 hours. For the last four hours on I-5 the gas gage was reading empty. Well, there's nothing dangerous about sitting in your car on the freeway except maybe getting too excited and having a heart incident, so we sat and relaxed listening to the radio. Eventually we got to the road that runs on the south end of Boeing Field, and managed to ease our way over there and get off the freeway. We filled up with gas and emptied our crankcases, and (silly us) headed back to the freeway. On the way to the freeway we noticed two different cabs that had parked and walked away from the situation. I guess they were from the Middle East or some other place where they don't have snow. As I approached I-5 I noticed that there was lineup, and I was going to have to creep up a small hill to get on the freeway. I decided to turn around and take my chances on the old Highway 99.

It took us nine and a half hours to get to Tacoma from the freeway interchange in Seattle. We had spent most of that time parked on I-5 with the gas tank reading empty. It was surreal. You could see the lights of cars far away up on So. Center hill parked on the freeway. We were at the end of Boeing Field for the longest time. It felt like the flying saucers should come down and start shooting, or the big dinosaur that hatched last spring would come and eat us, car and all. deciding to take 99 was the smartest thing I did all night. We arrived back here in Tacoma around 2:30 am. We had left Rice at 10 am, and we had hit Seattle around 5 pm.

The rental house we bought in Tacoma is almost done. The hot water was frozen here at our house, but the new house has had no such problems, and is being insulated as I write. I think we'll have a party there when it's done. I'll let you know. Steve N.

PS - We went to Skamokawa for Thanksgiving. Kristi didn't want to go, as she was a little freaked about driving, but I talked her into going anyway. She was right. It took us an hour to get outside the Tacoma city limits. We had fun though. There were lots of people, food, and good things to drink. Maybe I'll get to stay home for awhile now. I guess we won't get out on the road again until we hear it's gonna snow, and then we're gonna head straight for Seattle!