Scary!

[montereymacgyver]

We got home a while ago from the scariest drive I have been on in a long time. I can sum it up in three letters...FOG.
It had been a bit foggy coming down the mountain on the 45 mile trip to Sonora (i.e. civilization) to run errands. But the return trip was a production directed by Vincent Price!
Fog so thick I could not see more than 3 feet in front of the hood. I spent the whole drive praying that I was going to catch an occasional glimpse of the center line while driving 5 mph into a billowing cloud of white nothingness. Then, around Moccasin, the fog started to clear so I headed up Priest Grade.......Big Mistake!!!! For those unfamiliar with this area, Priest Grade is the old Hwy 120 on the way to Yosemite. It goes up 2000 feet in the space of 1.5 twisting, turning, hairpin, miles. They built a new road on the other side of the canyon that takes 6.5 miles to achieve the same altitude. I was on the grade and the fog closed back in thicker than before. Now I am driving virtually blind with a 1000 ft vertical drop on one side of the road. There are three cars hugging my rear bumper so they can follow my taillights as we creep up the grade. I felt like a mother duck with three babies waddling behind....only, if this duck made a mistake, they would follow me right over the edge! (some times it is no fun to be the lead dog)
After an agonizingly long time, we all made it safely home but, my nerves were shot! That is as close to extreme sports as I want to come!
The locals have tee-shirts made that say "I survived Priest Grade". They sell like crazy to the daylight tourists...try it at night in a pea soup fog!

That was about as much adventure as I care to have in one night.
I think I will just go gold prospecting on the rain swollen, swiftly flowing Mokolume river tomorrow to get back to my calm existence.

Rick

 

[Ron J]

n/t

 

[Micheal_R]

n/t

 

[WillyP]

I grew up in Medford, Oregon. The valley Medford sits in (Rogue Valley) used to get a foggy spell of about a week. There were warnings not to go out in it on the radio.
Sort of like the snow warnings we get now. I remember a time when two cars were following a lead car (like yours) and the lead car happened to live in the farm land. Thier
drive way kept going straight off of a ninety degree bend in the road. These people actually had a three car pile up in the man's gargage and driveway.
Our fog there was as you described. Maybe a 5' visibility in the bad times and very thick. I remember how quiet it was as the fog dampened sound (sort of like snow).
Hard to imagine unless you've been in it. Glad you made it.

 

[david(tx)]

it doesn't get quite that foggy here and the only way i can relate to your ordeal is driving in a rain storrm where it's raining so hard your wipers can't get near keeping up and you can't see.i experienced that one day in mesquite,texas on the loop around dallas.i was doing all right until i started under an overpass and a woman stopped right in the middle of the 4 lanes under the bridge.i know she was shook but she nearly got a bunch of people killed.

glad you survived.

 

[Cupajo]

I've experienced some pretty nasty soup and rain storms along the Texas shore where the only things you would have to worry about were staying out of the deep roadside ditches, not hitting livestock, farm equipment or another driver and being hit by someone flying blind.

Thank God I've never been caught in the situation you described. That's enough to scare the hell out of the devil himself!

Glad you got safely through it.

Regards,

Cupajo