Today was a travel day and, as travel days go, it was messy. We left our Chehalis campsite, stopped at the always-pleasant waste dump and took off headed north. The weather since leaving Oregon has been on the damp side and today started out that way. By the time we had driven the 20 minutes to I-5 the weather was getting nastier with steady, moderate rain. Once on I-5, the excitement really began. The rain increased to steady, heavy rain and Washington highways are not really constructed in such a way that the accumulated rain will run off the pavement. Additionally, the roads are at such an advanced age that there are ruts in the pavement where the wheels of the vehicles have passed for so many years that any precipitation seeks the low spots resulting in two continuous trenches of water per lane.
Most of the time when towing our trailer, moisture on the road has not been a problem other than the usual hazards of sliding, skidding or jackknifing. On Washington’s roads however, continuous freeway speed driving through parallel water troughs allowed water to find a way into our trailer that had spun off the swamped tires and through a joint where the living room slide-out sidles up to the trailer’s frame. The result was some wet carpet and flooring in the living room that we discovered once we got to our destination.
Another benefit of the road construction here is the blinding spray from wheels of cars and trucks plowing the water from the depressions in the pavement and liberating clouds of vision-obscuring tan slop which coats all windshields. Furious windshield wiper operation was not sufficient to clear the vision-obscuring road slime from Charlotte’s windscreen. Even the poorly painted lines between the lanes become invisible which makes many motorists want to lift their foot from the throttle. The balking of motorists results in braking by following traffic and a general slowdown of everyone. The slowdowns do have a bright side – there is much less spray than when everyone is swimming along at 65 mph.
We try to skirt the beautiful but traffic-fubared Seattle area when we come through this part of the world. Unfortunately, the crappy weather clogged all roads in the area so a trip of less than 100 miles took 3 hours on freeways and other limited access highways. We passed some horrible-looking wrecks.
After following a circuitous route through many communities with funny names like Sammamish, we pulled into a campground in Fall City called Tall Chief. Fall City is about 15 miles or 65 minutes southeast of Seattle. The rain continued to pour down on us as we set up the Barbarian Invader. Thoroughly soaked, we eventually climbed into our traveling home and cozied up while the furnace worked on drying our soaked attire and carpet. I’m glad we had some medicinal alcohol on board.