Weather has continued to dominate Washington. After the Christmas snow, it snowed again on Sunday evening. Coming off the I-90 off ramp near our house, our windscreen wipers stopped working and it was impossible to see where we were going! It was compacted snow that were stopping the wipers working so after some "de-snowing" we were on our way again. We feared another "snow day" and our rubbish not being picked up again, but by the morning most of it had disappeared.
Tuesday it blew a Hooley (at least for here) and we lost power twice for a very short time. But by comparison with many in the local area we have been fine. A lot of folks have been flooded by record river levels. See here for pictures. In December 2007, the I-5 south towards Oregon was closed and that happened again this week. It is estimated to cost $4 million a day in lost revenue. Last time, truckers were able to drive an extra 400 miles and go over the mountain passes. Not this year. All the passes were closed due to avalanches and mudslides. For a couple of days, residents of Washington could not travel by road south or east out of the state. The governor has extended the "state of emergency" of many areas which allows residents to claim federal disaster money.
Today we went to see Snoqualmie Falls as there was a fantastic picture of the Falls in the paper this week. Here’s a link to the pictures we took last May. At that time it was the most water we had seen, but today the Falls were even more magnificent! But there was so much spray being blown about that it was impossible to take good pictures! At both of the observations decks we were rained on from the spray!!!!!!! I wanted to walk part of the longer trial but that was closed due to hazardous conditions, which wasn’t surprising as there was a waterfall off to the side gushing water that we had never seen before.
On the way home, we tried to test out the Snoqualmie brew pub but were unable to get it to because the road was closed due to flooding. So we came back via the XXX Root Beer Drive In which we visited in the summer with Sarah and Sam. Here’s the picture we took then. Personally, I really don’t like root beer as I think it tastes like germolene, a British antiseptic pink cream! Mark, on the other hand, loves it. The Drive In is an incredible American diner full of 50s and 60s memorabilia and a gathering place for classic car shows through the year.
