Doing Scary Things
We went out to visit the kids last weekend. Winter always carries the fear that the weather will cancel the trip, but we ended up with sun and warm enough weather. You could go for a walk in the afternoon without freezing.
My cousin ended up in a town about an hour and a half away on the same weekend, and we decided to drive at each other. I picked a town I had never seen before but knew the name, and the kids informed me after everything was set that I might be a little nervous during the drive because at least five minutes of it was along a very twisty mountain road with a very steep drop.
I am not good on mountain roads.
I am very not good on mountain roads.
Waze took us on a very odd route going to the town, and I commented that I hoped it would send us back another way because I didn’t want to ride through the small towns and woodland when it was getting dark. But it took us the route the kids knew going home.
It was as awful as I feared. Back and forth. A sheer drop down a mountain with only a short, ice-covered barrier. Signs warning that steep roads were ahead. I spent a good ten minutes screaming obscenities while Josh guided us down the mountain.
And then… the sublime. We ended up driving for ten minutes through a valley, the road twisting alongside a stream. No buildings in sight, just miles of ice-covered trees and snowy ground and a grey road ribboning underneath enormous mountains.
I would have missed those ten minutes in the valley if I had never endured the first ten terrifying minutes of getting there.
3 comments
This reminds me of when I was 14 (1975) and we were travelling from Banff to Vancouver (and then back again) via the Kicking Horse Pass in British Columbia… We were pretty high up, the roads were steep and winding and generally not as good as they are today, and while we were mostly on the inside lane as we headed west, it was a pretty long drop down, with not a lot of barriers! My mother had a FIT! She wanted to take the American route home, which would have taken us a long way out of our way and added extra time to the trip. I seem to remember she got a valium from somewhere to take, and that — even though neither one of us is especially fond of heights either! — she made me or my sister (I forget which one of us) sit in front (i.e., on the side closest to the edge!) while she sat in the back behind Dad driving and closed her eyes! (Thanks, Mom! lol)
Years later (2010), we drove the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island — not QUITE as scary, but there were still a few white-knuckle spots! — and we were driving the route clockwise, i.e., mostly on the inside lane. (Someone gave us that tip before we headed out, lol.) Both drives were pretty spectacular, though!
I get it. We have some pretty high roads just to get over to the nearby wine region where my friend lives. I drive them cautiously! And when we were in Norway, we were driving down a mountain to a fjord – around and around these hairpin bends with sheer drops down to the sea. It felt extra scary because we were of course on the wrong (right) side of the road! lol And it felt so wrong, as if D was driving too fast, and I was on the driver’s side (the NZ driver’s side) but without control. We got there in the end, beautiful scenery, drove on, then discovered a tunnel was blocked so we had to detour – back up the mountain!
I drove us from San Francisco to Seattle along Route 1, forgetting that I like to drive fast on major interstates, but don’t enjoy twisty-turny sloped mountain roads. I managed OK, but sometimes it was terrifying. We had a great trip though, and stopped to hike at many different gorgeous places.