Shortly before Christmas last year, I spent a week driving my two small daughters 1,800 miles, from Portland, Oregon, to the Bay Area and back. Normally this trip is shorter, but I wanted to take them to my mother’s hometown, Alturas, which is in the very northeastern corner of the state, in Modoc County. I conceived my plan early in the fall, when it seemed like a good idea, and started the trip in the winter, when it seemed like a much less good idea. To drive from Portland straight to Petaluma, our first Bay Area stop, is a matter of 10 hours without traffic—basically a straight shot down I-5. A detour to Alturas added about 100 miles jutting out to the east, taking us over the Willamette Pass in the middle of winter.
I had the children in the back seat of a rented sedan with no chains. The road, Oregon Route 58, was covered in packed snow. SUVs and pickups were flying along it, but I was petrified and drove well under 25 miles an hour. The
