And here’s where I should have kept to what I had planned. 
Instead of following the Oregon Bikeways path between Salem and Champoeg, we made the mistake of using Waze. Waze kept wanting to put us on the freeway. Unfortunately, every entrance to the freeway had very long backups. We would wait for a while and then Waze would re-route us further south, to wait in another long line for the freeway. We did this four times, never actually reaching the freeway, before I called, “Uncle,” we stopped at a truck stop to have a mediocre meal, and I took over the navigating.
This man was walking faster than cars were moving.
There was a lot of this:
I didn’t keep track of what time we left Salem, probably 1:15-1:30 pm. After the truck stop, I used Google Maps and chased the roads that were green. It meant we went out of our way, but at least we were moving. Once we got far enough north on back roads, we easily popped onto the interstate and had a quick trip home. But overall? Probably five hours in the car. It took us an hour to get there.
Still totally worth it.
Man Alive! Those pictures show JUST HOW WORTH IT IT WAS!! I mean, how could the MN State Fair top those for the holiday postcard?!?!? I mean that’s my guess for the postcard right now….
Ah, but you are forgetting of another AMAZING picture from earlier in the year. There will probably be eclipses pictures in the Christmas letter, though. And fair pictures, of course.
Curious that so many people left early and yet it was so backed up when you left at a much later time.
There were 40 billion people in Salem. Or so the news coverage predicted.