Thanksgiving 2006

Despite driving 2000 miles within a week (1800 of it in the course of four days), our family trip to Oregon was a lot of fun, and provided a much-needed break from everything for me. We left on Tuesday afternoon, as soon as Kelly was done with school. Traffic was light and fast, and the weather was generally good.


We travelled as far as Redding, where we checked into a Motel 6 (with its 19-inch TV!) for the night. The Weather Channel showed two bad patches of weather in the entire nation: a storm in New York, and snow right up the I-5 corridor in Oregon. We had heard that the weather across the Siskiyous at the Oregon border would deteriorate by the time we planned to pass through on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving, so in order to guarantee that we would not encounter snow, I bought chains the night before we left. Worked like a charm. We found only rain. Lots of it.

We quickly adapted to the Oregon mentality. Rain did not stop us from going to the park:


We enjoyed a full Thankgiving dinner at Mom's house:


Four generations partaking:


The kids got to do some trail exploration at Dad's place:


We all enjoyed a morning at the children's museum that has been created at the home of A.C. Gilbert, the inventor of the Erector Set and a whole bunch of other "learning" toys from years ago:



A final surprise came the night before we left, when a Canadian air mass that was to wreak havok across the midwest hit the Pacific northwest first, covering all of Eugene with an inch or two of snow:


As we found out on the way home, all of western Oregon got hit with snow, making for a beautiful drive:


And then we saw this:


Surely, that sign and the statement on the weather conditions radio station that all cars were required to "chain up" were just left over from the night before, right?

Nope:


The snow ended just before the summit, and as soon as we drove down into California, evidence of snowfall was nowhere to be found. Ah, home again.