Heavy rain woke me at 4 this morning in Astoria, and at first light I headed to the Peninsula. The rain wasn’t terrible, but all along the way I was listening to reports from the Oso slide while eyeing the rain-soaked hills on my driving route. This after driving 101 along the coast during a tsunami awareness week.
I was pretty convinced that a giant earthquake from the Cascadia subduction zone would topple the hill next to me, covering me in mud and debris, only for all of it and me to be picked up and swept out to sea by the inevitable tsunami. Wise, well-meaning voices on the radio advised me to have a plan, but I never came up with one while making a 30 mph turn around a mountain pitched a few hundred feet above the water with only six feet of clearance between the road surface and complete destruction.
The weather guys are predicting the wettest March in western Washington ever recorded. What was it, 2 weeks ago that I was commenting on how dry the southwest was? Talk about contrasts.
Thankfully beating all odds of my assured demise, I pulled into the park and was told I was now number 3 on the waiting list for a lot. I looked up at the hillside next to the park, never before noticing how tall it is, and signed up for a week.