A Christmas Adventure

I'm going to start at the beginning of our Christmas adventure and then post over the next few days about our vacation, instead of doing one long post.
Well, we weren't sure whether the roads were going to be okay for travel, and we figured out that going over Highway 12 in Washington over White Pass, would maybe be a better option, even if they opened the Gorge. So, we decided to wait and see what happened on Tuesday morning. We didn't even pack the night before--I felt like it would be too depressing to unpack if we couldn't go! So, we woke up, and watched the news. The Gorge re-opened, and we decided to try to make it, but we would still go over White Pass. We set out, ran a few errands in town and of course Ryan fell asleep. We had to wake him up to eat lunch, but then we hit the road. I-5 was AWFUL!! It was like driving on a washboard because all the chains had made grooves in the packed snow and ice. Around Woodburn, the traffic stopped and started going about 10 miles an hour! We decided that we were going to try 99-E instead. 99 was SCARY! It was really slick and snowy, but there weren't many people on that road at all, so it was better! All in all, it took us 2.5 hours to get from Salem to Portland! But, after we hit 205, the roads were clear and we were able to actually go over 20 mph! Ryan finally fell asleep again around 3:30 p.m. and slept until we had to wake him up to eat dinner. The pass was clear and Ryan did great. He really only started melting down the last hour or so of the trip! (He did throw fits every time we tried to put him in the car for the next few days!) We finally rolled into my parents house around 7 p.m. 7 hours after we had left the house! YIKES!