Leaving Portland

A lot has happened since my last post!

On Thursday I was home, working, because pandemic. Remember we are still in a pandemic? I was working in our office and around 9am or so it was starting to get a little smoky. I left the office, did some laundry in the basement, went to the third floor to put laundry away, came back down to the office and it was even worse. Decided to take my work laptop upstairs to our bedroom for my 90 minute work meeting.

After my meeting was over, I walked downstairs and our house was so smoky I could barely breathe.

The air quality is so bad in Portland you can’t really breathe, especially if you have issues like asthma. The green on the map is good. The maroon color is hazardous. If you see on the map, 478 and 491 is where my aunt’s farm was. Nearby is 999!!!! Off the charts bad. Portland, near us is in the 300 range.

So anyways, Thursday Michael came home early because our evacuation level was changing. We were at Level (be Ready) and then Level 2 was getting closer and closer to our house (like three blocks or so away, basically on the other side of a river).

Near us, Oregon City/Beavercreek/Estacada/Molalla/Woodburn were Level 3 and so was Lincoln City (at the beach) and they were all evacuating.

Michael and I started packing for real and packing the cars. We waited a bit and then he went to get Logan, gas in the car and dinner. All the fast food restaurants were closed! So we had dinner at home and talked about a plan. We decided that Logan and I and the cats would go to Seattle to my parents house and Michael and Bella would wait a bit and see how it goes and if need be, he’d pack some more stuff. Then he’d come up to Seattle.

My car was mostly packed. We left around 6pm or so. It took over an hour just to get out of Portland. I avoided 205 because it was a complete parking lot with everyone evacuating from down South. I drove the backroads towards downtown and then picked up I-5 North. It was 10-20 mph, lots of traffic. People were nice, though.

Traffic got better once I got past Vancouver.

Then traffic thinned out and we were driving a normal speed. It was clear sailing the rest of the way to Seattle–honestly, traffic was pretty good! Best I’ve had during that drive. LOL

It was dark, smoky, cloudy, a very long drive. Logan would not nap. He was bored. He asked “are we there yet?” Every five minutes. The cats were not happy and kept talking to each other. LOL FUN!

We got to Seattle at 10pm and got settled. It was nice to be somewhere we could breathe. The air was much better!

Friday we got up and had breakfast and I did a little work.

Seattle had some blue skies and fresh air. As the day progressed it got a little more smoky and gross, but nowhere near as bad as home.

And the good part is that the smoke wasn’t in my parents house. So we could hunker down and just chill. I was still getting updates and texts and notifications from home. Still stressful. No idea how long we’ll be in Seattle. It depends on the air quality at home. It looks like it might start raining Monday or Tuesday in Portland.