Today was a travel day. We gathered up our folding chairs, cleaned up the interior of the Barbarian Invader, disconnected from the shore utilities and departed Tall Chief RV in Fall City, WA. Our destination for today was Chehalis Thousand Trails near the town with the same name.
We had originally gone to Tall Chief in order to skirt the Seattle metropolitan area and its horrible traffic. Today we left Fall City, got on I-90 for a bit before turning south on I-5. Our efforts to avoid the hellish traffic were not entirely successful.
Seattle metro is unique in the number of absolute nightmares encountered by motorists passing over their highways. Many of the drivers have considerable difficulty keeping their cars in their twisting, narrow lanes. Lanes on the freeway just disappear with little or no notification to unsuspecting idiots, like us, and the resulting scramble created by the sudden loss of a third of the lanes is nearly catastrophic. Entry and exit ramps are installed on both the right and left side of the freeways although many of them are blocked or were never completed. Speed limits change more often than a fashion model changes snazzy clothes. The road surfaces were created by apparently dropping hot asphalt from passing aircraft followed by another aircraft dropping high explosive bombs. Signage is either confusing, incorrect or non-existent. Road construction barricades and delineators are everywhere but no construction appears to be in progress. WADOT vehicles with flashing amber lights clog the few, screwy lanes in their aimless search for imaginary work in progress. It is a mystifying and treacherous funhouse of potential death.
After much terror and confusion, we finally passed through Olympia on our way south and right away the number of lanes were reduced, making the already chaotic traffic squeeze down into two lanes and the speed of many motorists to be reduced to a mere crawl, perhaps due to perceived ring tones from their cell phone or hallucinations. Some folks just drive along on the freeway, 40 miles per hour slower than all the adjacent traffic while making obscene gestures at their fellow risk-takers who have sounded their horns in an attempt to encourage them to accelerate. Sometimes, a motorist in one of the two lanes would abruptly slow or stop creating a flurry of swerving, bright brake lights and much lane changing without the benefit of turn signals. On this stretch of highway, the speed limit for cars is 70 and for trucks it is 60 but the trucks around us were all going about 70 as they dodged from lane to lane in their attempts to avoid slow or stopped passenger vehicles. The cars we doing around 62, 25 or 6.
We finally made it to Chehalis and turned off the freeway for a nice 15 minute drive east on abandoned roads to the Chehalis RV entrance. It was wonderful to be off the metro highways. We found a nice spot in the campground, set up our stuff and climbed into the Barbarian Invader for some liquor.