Not lost

Well, I did get a good night's sleep last night, so I was not drowsy on my home. Still, I missed my exit on the freeway. I usually get on Highway 5 to go home. For a long time I took the Guide Meridian exit and drive the Guide to Lynden.

That reminded me of the years we lived in Phoenix, Arizona, when I was a girl, and we would drive Highway 5 from Southern California all the way to Bellingham and take that very exit to get to Lynden. I would be very excited at that point--if I was awake.

Side track thought: We'd always plan to drive x number of days from Phoenix to Lynden but my parents always decided on day x - 1 to drive straight through the night to Lynden. We would arrive at my Grandma's little house on Hawley Street in the deep dark hours and stumble into the house and into bed. Then the happiness of waking up in the morning in Lynden. We had such lovely long vacations there, too. Since my dad was in the military, he had 30 days of leave per year. Did we spend all 30 on our visits to Lynden? Seems like it. And I was young enough that 30 days felt like a long time. End of side track thought.

But during the pre-Christmas season this winter I stopped taking that exit. Traffic was heavy and slow by the shopping mall and Costco, it was dark, and driving conditions were difficult to be in the congestion. The exit is ill-designed as well. When you get off the exit ramp onto the Guide you are immediately in an exit-only right lane and have to switch lanes to the left to keep going straight. Meanwhile, people pulling up behind you want to get into the exit lane.

So I started taking the Northwest Avenue exit, the next one north, then turning right onto Bakerview and taking Bakerview to the Guide at just the other side of the shopping mall. Sometimes I would miss the right turn onto Bakerview but then immediately turn around and come back to it. That is because I seem to recall getting lost off Northwest once and ending up driving around on the Lummi Reservation for quite some time. But eventually, due to a recent conversation with my sister-in-law and a longer ago conversation with an aunt, I realized if I stayed on Northwest I could catch another road to the Guide, like Axton or Pole, and finally I experimented with my belief that if I stayed on Northwest forever it would turn into Wiser Lake Road and bring me to the Guide very near Lynden, and it turned out my belief was correct. So that's how I've been going home lately.

But tonight I drove past the Northwest exit and didn't realize it until I was driving past the Bakerview exit, at which point I exclaimed, "What! Did I miss the Northwest exit?" Yes, yes, I did. "Well," said I, "I guess I'll have to take the Birch Bay Lynden exit, although that is a bit out of my way." But then I remembered that there is a way to Lynden even from the Gates of Ferndale. So when I got to Ferndale, I was cautious. Not the Main Street/City Center exit. That's a weird exit, too, with a long frontage road. I can barely find my way to the Denny's that is right there, much less to Lynden. Then the next exit was Portal Way. Was that it? If not, would I spend much of the evening driving around the north county in the dark? I had a full tank of gas, so I risked it. I thought would turn into the Enterprise Road and take me to the Birch Bay Lynden Road much nearer Lynden than the freeway exit. I couldn't tell if it did turn into Enterprise, but it did bring me to the Birch Bay Lynden Road, and I proceeded to Lynden in triumph. I can find my way around the north county! Even in the dark I know which direction the mountains are in (that would be east in some dialects), which direction the water is in (aka west), and which direction Canada is in (some people call that direction north).

But I'd better not boast or next thing you know tomorrow night I'll be driving around the north county in the dark, wondering where I am.