Portland Bound

You guessed it, another rainy morning! I got on the road and stopped a couple of minutes down the highway to fill up my water jugs at a random water spicket on the side of the road. There were signs saying drinking water so I knew it was safe. As I got closer and closer to the city, more cars crowded the highway. I experienced something really scary getting closer to Portland. I could see traffic was getting quite congested ahead and slowed down since it was getting to be standstill/crawling traffic. I looked in my rearview mirror and noticed a truck, about the size of a Tacoma or so, not slowing down. I watched as this truck came barreling towards me and thought I’m about to get hit. He must have looked up as soon as I thought that because he swerved into the right lane, probably going around 50 mph since the speed limit was 55, just missing me. He over-corrected and hit the car two in front of me, bounced off that truck and slammed into the back of a small car. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe I didn’t get hit. I couldn’t believe I had just witnessed that and was so close to it. The small car's trunk was now basically in its back seat, the side-swiped truck's tire was blown and the wheel well completely indented. The hood of the truck that hit them was smashed in and the front wheels bent out of shape. Luckily, it looked like everyone was ok. The man that hit them got out and was checking on the others. The car in front of me pulled over and started guiding the cars around the crash and I saw the passenger in the small car was rubbing her neck. I drove over debris as I left the scene, somehow untouched. I seriously could not believe I didn’t get hit, he was so close I would have thought he’d at least nick me.

I drove away dumbfounded and a little shaken. I called my parents as traffic continued to be crawling. I talked with them for a little bit. But I was nervous driving the rest of the day.

I got a shower in at Planet Fitness and stopped in at a library to work on some blog posts. Luckily my website didn’t give me any problems that day so I was able to post all of my updates. I ate an early lunch before heading through town to get to the area along the Columbia River. I planned to spend a couple of days seeing this area since there were so many natural and scenic areas, trails, and waterfalls. I wanted to check out Lost Lake near Mt Hood and I drove all the way there to find the road to get all the way to the lake was closed. I was a bit bummed but the drive was really pretty through the Oregon countryside and, closer to the lake, there were snowbanks, some taller than me, lining the road. Mt Hood also looked really cool before the clouds covered it up.

I wanted to try to find this camping spot I had found on an app, free dispersed camping spots were kind of hard to come by in this area it seemed, which surprised me. But my GPS was acting really weird and basically had me driving in circles and changed my destination, somehow bringing me back to where I started. So, needless to say, it frustrated me and I decided to forget it and head to the Walmart in Hood River. On the bright side, there were tons of trees in bloom and it looked so pretty driving past the rows of white flowering trees that had a very pleasant smell. Once I got to the Walmart I ate some leftovers for dinner and just hung out in my van until I went to bed.