Mountain Driving??? | Pad Patter 5.6.17

nope. when we lived in CA and took the coastal scenic route up the coast, north of SF, i used to have hide under a blanket. i wanted to throw up!

 

I LOVE winding mountain roads! BUT only if I'm driving- otherwise I get carsick! We go over a 2 lane mountain pass when we go to my mom's house & it's super fun to drive down- but I have a soccer-mom suv which doesn't corner super well! lol! Also- my son gets carsick so we oftentimes have to slow down so he doesn't puke!

 

One of the few memories that has stuck with me from childhood is a street leading to a house my grandmother lived in for a while. It was the steepest street I've ever been on (unless my memory exaggerates it) and I remember being scared of it as a child.

Since I've learned to drive I haven't had to drive much on anything steep. Especially in the last 17 years since we moved from California to Virginia.

I understand your feeling more nervous about going down than up. Going down holds more potential for danger, it seems.

What makes me more nervous here, though I don't encounter them often either, are tall freeway overpasses and long bridges over river/bay.

 

Hahaha your photos look like my every day drive! We don't go quite that high, but here at my house I am at about 2700 ft. and the ski resort about 15 min from here is 3600 ft. Not every road is that winding but a lot of them are, and it's up and down wherever you go. We have lots and lots of switchbacks and s-curves. I go down a mountain to work and back up it to get home...fortunately it's 4 lane. But, when we want to go on a drive, that's the kind of drive we take (like your 2nd picture), since that's most of our back roads.

I grew up and learned to drive on mountains, as did my kids, so it's not that big of a deal. When I got my first manual transmission car, my dad took me out on one of those hills, parked, put me in the driver's seat, and said "now go". The mountains are actually pretty fun if the weather is good. We used to take the trucks and jeeps deep in the mountains and climb for fun. The only time I don't really like it at all is the winter. Gravity is a pain. My DH moved here from IN, so learning to drive here was his biggest challenge!

 

I live in Pittsburgh. No road is flat. Up and down and all around. Flat roads are boring.

 

I kissed the frog!

 

Houston was so flat that my DD thought the on-ramp to the freeway was a roller coaster lol. Two freeways "intersect" so you have to go over one direction to enter the other direction. That ramp made her raise her hands and yell "WHEEEE!" lol! Anyway, where we are now isn't that flat, but it is a bit hilly. And yeah, @djp332 ain't lying: the tollway thru PA is carved into mountains. I hate the "warning: falling rocks" signs!

 

I don't mind the mountains. To go from here to my parents we have to cut through a tiny part of Arizona. almost all a mountain pass! I don't like it with semis, but since it's gradual down, it's not bad.

Now water? Water freaks me out. I saw a road that @gonewiththewind drives that looks to me like miles over water, and got scared just looking at it! This is why I will never make it to Key West unless I'm kidnapped.

 

I don't mind them so much. They are all over the place where I live. One thing I don't like is driving on one-way, narrow mountain roads. I have to drive one 2x every week to the piano teachers house. I'm always so afraid I'm going to meet someone & have to back down (there are no pull offs!). I've met someone a few times...a couple times while driving my big ol' 12 passenger van. Backing up a 12 passenger van on the narrow mountain roads is not fun!

 

I don't mind mountain driving... except for the superwindy road you take through the mountains from Loveland to Estes Park to get to Rocky Mountain National Park.

It made me a little nauseated going back and forth and back and forth. Since you can't go fast because of all the turns, it seems like it takes forever, too. I forced myself to nap part of the way back because I was feeling so terribly (and I rarely have any issues with my stomach). DH, who has a constant upset stomach, said he felt fine but maybe that was because he was driving?!

 

Oh, I forgot that I actually have a funny mountain driving story!

I was going to visit some friends who had recently moved into the mountains of WV. I was fine until I had to take the backroads to get to their house. It was dark, thank God, so when I got to a particularly steep part of the narrow almost one-way road, I just put the pedal to the metal in my Geo Metro hatchback (oh yeah, I know you're jealous now!) and managed to get up and around.

Then I got lost. In attempting to turn around, I managed to fall off the road and get half stuck in a ditch. It is nearly midnight, BTW, and pitch dark and on the side of a heavily forested mountain in WV. My friends were experimenting with 'living off the grid' so, of course, they did not have cell phones and their landline hadn't been set up yet.



Someone from the house where I was stuck near came out to see if I was okay. He called a friend with a giant truck who pulled me out after several attempts. In the meantime, my friend came by in their truck seeing as I was running so late and thinking I might have gotten lost or stranded.

I had to take the same road back when I left at the end of the weekend. I got to the really steep section of the road and nearly fainted. I have no idea except for the grace of God how my teeny-tiny Geo managed to make it up the almost-vertical part of the road there. If even one of my tires had slipped even a little, I would have fallen to my death. I nearly drove into the side of the mountain to get back down.

Thankfully, they moved the following year so I never had to use that road again!