My wife persuaded me that we should spend the Christmas holiday in Montana this year. Since most of her family lives there in the Bitterroot valley, I can understand why. We usually spend it in Seattle. The tricky part is driving the whole family and the dog over several mountain passes. The weather in Seattle was already a little dicey with the hilly side streets mainly ice. We decided to leave on the Saturday before Christmas and take 2 days to get there. My son needed to attend his Tae Kwan Do promotion test that Saturday so we wouldn’t be able to leave until that afternoon. The weather forecast was 8 inches of snow that evening. We finally left Seattle at 2:00 PM. The conditions on Snoqualmie pass were reasonable and there weren’t many trucks about. We crossed the Columbia River and it was clear sailing until we reached Spokane which had 2 ½ feet of snow the day before. We slugged through and finally found a hotel that would take a 95 pound d ...

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