Both Kathryn and I are in Orlando now. We arrived this past weekend after one hell of a cross country drive back.

We met up in Portland, Oregon, drove north of Seattle, flew to Orange County, and drove to the east coast. There's just too many things to talk about in one blog post, and we haven't gotten the disposable camera pictures developed yet (our elph broke), but, included are my camera phone pictures.

Click "continue reading" for the photo-journal of sorts ;)

Flying out of Seattle to Santa Anna, then immediately driving the first leg of the cross country tour to Vegas.

Oh, and, as of now, I'm officially turning the laptop off ;) Call the cell if something drastic happens.

So, we're actually not in Seattle. We're about 90 miles north in a small college town. It really does look like Narnia outside, or maybe one of those miniature Christmas figurines.

I don't know if you've seen or not, but there was a tad bit of snow last night up in this region of the country, which normally gets only little snow through the winter. What should have been a 3 to 4 hour drive, turned into an 8 hour adventure. I'm talking "driving" down I-5 with abandoned cars, buses and jack knifed trucks all around us. Who knows how many accidents we saw.

When we finally got to Seattle, which has the most amazing sky line around, there was a huge accident on I-5. We pulled off to try to make our way on back roads, only to discover they were a complete wreck. Solid ice probably an inch thick. We had chains in the back seat, but the idea of laying on the street in the middle of Seattle didn't quite seem appealing.

We slowly skated our way to a road that lead back to the highway, but it was too steep. Cars and trucks were sliding down and spinning off. The entire neighborhood, at midnight on a Monday, was outside helping people and steering off cars. We got around the pesky neighborers and attempted it, only to slide down with everyone else. At that point, we just slowly started to take back roads in a stair step fashion, somehow making it through seemingly abandoned areas to I-5.

About 30 or 40 miles north, there was no one left on the roads with us. I hit a patch of black ice and hydroplaned for easily 200-250 yards. My cat like reflexes and extensive video game training allowed us to maintain forward momentum, for the most part staying within our lane. There's something about sliding down the road at 50mph that makes for a pretty solid adrenaline rush.

Once we got a bit further, into a more mountain area, the skies cleared and the stars came out. The scenery, which I'm sure only a few of us out that night got to enjoy, was spectacular. Driving along I-5 with a mountain lake on one side, giant snow covered evergreens on the other, with a completely empty sky was a heck of an experience.

So, we're here now, somehow making it all the way in our rental ford focus while natives ended up stuck on the side of the road. We'll be here until Friday, at which point we drive back down to Seattle to fly out for L.A. Considering I've never driven in anything more than a half inch of snow before, and certainly not while its ever been actively snowing, I think I performed pretty well. I'm tellin ya, video games. Either that, or I'm part Yeti.

We're rolling out of Portland tonight to head north to Seattle. Portland's been a pretty cool place, sans the constant rain and cold. I've always heard good things about this town though, and from what I've been able to tell it's justified. We went and grabbed dinner at the happy hour at Portland City Grill last night, which has an amazing view of the city (it's on the 30th floor, with all glass windows looking out). The Saturday Market was a lot of fun this past weekend as well. Neat stuff. Too much incense, but.. neat ;)

Anyway.. more later.. lots of Blogsmith code to stamp out...