Mary Goes to The Mountains

Santiam Pass

On Friday, April 4th we wrapped up our business and our fun and prepared to leave Springfield. We went to the barn in the morning and Breezy and Buddy had their last romp together before we said our goodbyes to the Arcuris. Then we set off for Central Oregon...to meet the Arcuris for dinner. We were in Terrebonne less than 24 hours but once again we had a wonderful time. After we got there.

I had been checking the weather reports and travel cams on the mountain passes for two days. I used to live in Central Oregon and made many, many trips over Santiam Pass over the years so I am aware how quickly the weather can change up there even in the spring months. John has driven Mary in the rain, the wind, the dust and the sun but we hoped to avoid driving her in the snow. So I checked, re-checked and checked again obsessively. I checked twice before we left on Friday and had the weather cam on the Pass up on my computer desktop as we left the farm and headed out on Highway 126 to McKennzie Pass. It was raining lightly when we left. Twenty minutes later it was raining harder. Forty minutes later it was raining cats and dogs. When we left, the weather cam on the mountain said 28 degrees. Twenty minutes later it said 30 degrees. Forty minutes later it said 31 degrees. Things were going well way up there on Santiam Pass even if they were deteriorating quickly down where we were. John was skillfully negotiating the wet roads and the wet weather while I quietly obsessed over whether we would get over the pass without encountering really bad weather.

I must say here that my husband is getting quite good at driving this huge vehicle. He has managed to put it in tight spots and get it out and drive it in all kinds of road conditions. It was probably just this side of insane for us to take off on a six week long trip knowing next to nothing about this motor coach but it has turned out very well. We haven't hurt it (that we are aware of) and the coach (and Dennis and Bob and a few dozen other Monaco technicians) and some friends and acquaintances and even a few strangers along the way have taught us so much about how to handle her and about all of her systems. I must also say that we are not totally confident with her yet but when I think about how completely inept we were when we left Florida a little over a month ago I'm pretty impressed with all that we have learned. We can distinguish sounds that are normal from sounds that are not. That's big. It cuts way down on adrenaline rushes. That will lengthen our lives considerably. If the adrenaline rushes had continued at the level at which we were experiencing them in the first two weeks we would have been dead a week ago. If I had to equate our current knowledge to the kindergarten through graduate school system I would say that we have graduated to at least....well...the third grade! But John is much more advanced than that in the driving end of things. That would be partly because he drove horse vans and horse trucks and trailers all of his life and partly because he hogs the driving of Mary all to himself. Remember when I said that I might get to drive her when we crossed West Texas? Well I haven't driven her yet. My job is navigation. A subject for another blog post.

On another subject...Buddy, the cutest Basset Hound alive, was a little depressed after Breezy left. Tim said he sat in the office and stared at the door for some time after she left as though he though she might come back through the door at any time for another romp in the arena together. So that means that we must come back soon. We can't let Buddy down. Of course Breezy, being the femme fatale that she is, has gone on as though nothing has changed. I like to think that down deep she has given Buddy a special place in her heart and she longs to return at some later date to Springfield to rekindle her relationship with him. Or she may be one of those fickle types leaving a string of broken canine hearts across the country and back. Time will tell.

So we continued on our way over McKennzie pass while I checked the traffic cam on Santiam Pass. To my absolute horror I see that the temperature has not only NOT continued to rise...it is falling. And each successive look at the cam tells me that it is getting foggier...or snowier up there on the top of the Santiam Pass. I decided it was fog. The last time I looked it had dropped from 31 degrees to 28 degrees and the view on the cam was nonexistent. It looked like a photo of dense fog. I checked the weather report for the 400th time. It didn't say anything about snow. Okay. "We're fine," I mutter to myself.

A note on denial: It is alive and well. Even when I know that I should say..."You know...it looks like it is getting colder up there and we may run into trouble," my mind says, "Well it's probable that we will get over the top without a hitch and then we will enjoy the time with Tim and Jean that we planned..." It truly didn't matter because at the point where I determined that there may be trouble it was too late to turn back.

Next the rain turned from plain old rain, to thick rain. And then to rain and snow. And then it turned to snow. I tried to update the travel cam but I had lost my Internet connection. Too far out of range. And then in no time (I mean FAST) the road went from wet to snow-covered and Mary was grinding up and down hills and around big curves in the snow. I said, "Well I guess as long as we don't have to stop we will be fine." John maintained a neutral expression and attitude. I was bolstered. If he wasn't freaked out by the weather then I wasn't freaked out by the weather.

Of course it was totall fallacy. And I knew it but once again denial was coloring my thinking. Thankfully I didn't find out until later that in his mind he was FREAKING OUT...and so was I. But neither of us wanted to freak the other one out because of the weather. Breezy snoozed as we chugged through the snow...freaking out...quietly.

Mary with all of her weight and can do (anything) attitude ground through the snow like a giant snow plow and John eased her through along like he had been driving motor coaches in the snow all of his life. We were good. We were fine. As long as we didn't have to stop we were in great shape.

Then we rounded a curve and our eyes popped. Murphy was back, sitting right behind my seat...snickering. There was a line of traffic ahead of us. All I could see was red brake lights. There were cars, trucks, and RV's and up the line a fifth wheel that was moving at about two miles an hour ON A HILL. I groaned. "Oh (expletive)." Feel free to fill in the blank. John eased Mary down to a crawl and eventually had to stop. The problem? The fifth wheel pulled by a dually truck was crawling along up the hill slowing all traffic to a near stand still. One by one cars and trucks eased out into the oncoming lane and passed the fifth wheel and we eased along until we got behind it. John glanced in the mirror and said, "There is a snow plow behind us." We looked at each other with knowing looks. "*#$%!@@ Murphy," I said. "A snow plow behind us is not going to help much."

In the mean time the person who was driving the fifth wheel was obviously scared poop-less or was a total simpleton. It was snowing harder. The hill seemed to be getting steeper. We followed along behind this idiot hoping that the snow plow would find a place to pass us and actually start helping us get over the pass. We broke over the hill and started down the other side. We followed the fifth wheel going 20 miles per hour up and down a few hills until out of the blue, in the middle of the damn road the idiot in the fifth wheel stopped. Dead in the road. Stopped. We couldn't see around him well enough to pass so we stopped too. The blessing in this was that the snow plow got sick of the both of us and passed us. We sat there cursing the idiot in the fifth wheel until we could get around him and when we did I looked out my co-pilot's window and saw a man about 99 years old with his window down waving and smiling like he had good sense.

Scary.



So we fell in behind the snow plow. I turned and flipped Murphy off and we moved on to ascend the steepest part of the pass. Mary handled it all like a champ. The Camry, which I had considered washing before we left the farm in Springfield, didn't fare as well. When we stopped I got out and looked at the coach and the car. Mary is sort of colored like the red cinders that they use on the road to provide traction so while she was really dirty the poor little car was absolutely filthy. It got dragged along behind Mary while she was kicking up all of those red cinders and dirty snow. It looked like it had been in used in a mud bog race. It still does. And Mary is sporting cinder/snow muck and bugs collected from Florida to Oregon and half way back. We can't wait to get her home and clean her up!

On The Descent

We made it to Terrebonne and set up at the RV park at Crooked River Ranch. When I called the office for directions to the park the woman who answered the phone gave me the rights and lefts and road names and then she told me that we would come to a sharp turn just before we drove down a steep hill to the park. She said, "Now I'm telling you, please slow down and be very careful on that turn. It's one of those 'Oh my God' turns." I thought that was a little odd...until we came to this turn. It is a 15 mile per hour ninety degree turn to the left and a guard rail that would keep the average vehicle from driving off a 500 foot cliff straight down to a golf course. Of course Mary isn't the average vehicle. She is huge. Once we made the turn and started down the hill we looked at each other and said in unison, "Oh my God," and then cracked up.


We had about an hour to settle in before we changed clothes and drove out to Ranch at the Canyons at Smith Rock and met Tim and Jean. They have a lovely home with a perfect view of Smith Rock. Then we went to Bend and had a great meal and a great time. We drove back to Terrebonne and greeted our wonderful little coach dog who was thrilled to see us. We both stopped outside in the cold evening air and looked up at the sky. It was a mass of sparkling stars against an inkt black sky. In all my years on the planet I've never been anywhere where you can find a night sky like that. It is spectacular.


In the morning we got up early and headed south. In my next blog I will describe a trip through the Sierra Nevada Mountains that was the most beautiful drive that either of us has ever taken. We are on a march to get to Oklahoma City for the Oklahoma Centennial horse show on Tuesday so we haven't had much time to stop and smell the roses but we have completely enjoyed the trip from the windows of our magic bus!