K’den. Onward and upward. We were pretty high up above the river by now and the air was cold. But the views were wonderful.

The snow-covered mountains in the distance were beautiful to look at, but there was no snow where we were. Yet.

There was no snow on the ground, so I was surprised at what I saw in my rearview mirror:

Yep. A pickup with a plow attached. I wondered where he was going. The driver, that is. Well, I guess if the driver was going there, so was the pickup. LOL. The ground was so clear where we were that it seemed strange to see the snowplow attachment.

I’d never seen stuff lidis till we moved to Oregon, cute little houses where kids could wait under shelter for the school bus. This one looked as though it could use some help.

More snow-covered mountains. They really were beautiful.

Somewhere in our travels, we saw these sheep:

I always stop for sheep.

TryLook was having a really hard time getting us to our next comparable sale. Sometimes the roads up here are short and very twisted, and the numbers are hard to follow. Streets run mauka and makai; Avenues run Diamond Head and ‘Ewa. Okay, okay. Use your imagination. Around here there are so many mountains that you could go mauka in almost every direction!

Anyway, TryLook had been doing an admirable job, but this time she took us to a totally wrong area. So we stopped and asked for directions at the nearest house, which, to my delight, happened to have alpacas! The people, not the house. So while Nolemana asked the owners for directions, I visited with the cute alpacas.

This guy had no fear at all!

Most of the alpacas were dark; I wanted to ask the owners if they ever sold their fleeces.

Niele, yeah? And ho da kewt!!

This one’s a little blurry, but I love the white on his face so am including it.

Unfortunately, the homeowners had no idea where the street was, so we decided we’d have to skip that comp. But just then I spied a UPS truck just up the road, and I said to Nolemana, “Let’s ask the driver!” Which we did. And this extremely helpful and friendly UPS man knew just where we needed to go; he even drew us a map! We thanked him profusely and off we went and off he went.

I spied this moss and took photos for Kikue who loves seeing moss on trees.

I guess TryLook felt bad, because as soon as we got back onto the road, following Mr Nice UPS Man’s directions, she decided she knew exactly where we should go too! Her directions matched Mr UPS Man’s directions exactly. Wassap wit dat?

We got the photo we needed, then headed back to take another one. Along the way we saw these cool horses:

We were climbing up the mountains again, and in one of the booniest areas, saw some snow close up.

We took the photo; the house was up an incredibly steep road that jackknifed back onto itself several times. Then we headed back down the mountain a little ways to take another comp photo. Right next to the road, we were delighted to see what the neighbors had done with a tree growing along the road.

“Eh, try look!” I told Nolemana. I could see tiny little flakes of snow beginning to fall. I wasn’t too worried because I figured it was just because of the elevation. In the Portland metro area, only rain was predicted. Ha!

We’d taken our last photo and were heading home. But as we dropped lower and lower into the valley, it began to snow harder.

We got several miles further, and I took this wonderful photo; the snow was really coming down hard now.

I loved Mr Buggy Man!

Somebody was really creative.

I didn’t know if it was only snowing here, so I called Julie to find out what was happening at home, and she said we should hustle home, that the snow was coming down there too. Good thing we’d just taken our last house photo!

We descended back down into the valley; it was snowing a lot more than it had been up higher.

We were both concerned that we wouldn’t be able to make it up our driveway again if we didn’t hurry. We’d already had to hike up once, on ice (!) just a couple of weeks ago, and that wasn’t much fun. The snow was sticking pretty good by now.

Nolemana took this as we crossed the Columbia River on I-205. We could barely even see the river. Traffic was really getting heavy.

Suddenly TryLook said, “Severe traffic congestion ahead; take exit to Airport Way, on right”. Usually if there’s congestion she gives us the choice to avoid it; this time she told us to get off. Now. So we did. And oh, how grateful we were that we did!

Traffic along Airport Way was a mess. Cars were just crawling along. TryLook wanted us to take NE 82nd Avenue home, heading south, but I decided to take Marine Drive instead, figuring that traffic would be much lighter there. Good choice. It was.

We could barely see the Columbia River.

Try look! There it is! TryLook was perfectly content for us to go this way. (She likes looking at the rivers too.)

We drove slowly through Gresham; the roads were getting a little slick, and it was a welcome sight to see the Al’s Garden Center sign up ahead.

Getting closer to home, the snow was coming down much harder and sticking. Now we were really getting concerned about the driveway!

Nearer home, and not much traffic on this road!

And there’s our hale. Can we make it up the driveway?

Nolemana fed Pikake and Puakea, then I drove up to the bottom of our driveway so Nolemana could unlock our gate. Then I had to back up so that I could get a running start.

But alas, we couldn’t make it. The Hyundai began slipping and sliding just past the gate. Good thing I had on my tennis shoes. We left the car on the driveway and began hiking up. She looked pretty lonely back there.

There’s the steep curve we have to hike up. Our footsteps were crunching in the snow; it was actually fun this time, much, much better than trying to hike up over ice. Kukui was having a great time snorfling in the bushes.

We made it! Looking back down towards the curve, an 18% grade right there.

There’s my van up at the house. Almost there!

Now we’re up at the house.

As my friend Bah Booze had suggested before, I pulled out the windshield wipers to keep them from freezing to the windshield. Now my van looked like some gigantic bug ready to attack!

Later on, Nolemana wanted me to take photos of the snow-covered branches through our security light.

Nani, yeah?

The next day dawned so pretty out over the valley.

We couldn’t get out till past 2 p.m. the next day, but that was okay.

Ckonhfuhnhnit! I ju2st 2spiololed kcoffee onh my kecyboard; fir2st time efver. Pau thi2s po2st. Good thihng pau da photo2s. S2hee2sh.