Profile For Patty H.

In reference to Cabbage someone mentioned "switchbacks". Can you tell me what that means exactly?

I am driving a 22 foot Penske rental truck full of furniture and towing a car. The one I drove before was a 26 foot truck with the car carrier. It was slow going up the hills of Oregon and California mountains. Took almost 2 days to get thru them. I could only go 25 miles an hour up the hills. I was just hoping to find a shorter route with less mountains and to avoid going thru I5 from CA to WA again. But 6 miles of Cabbage 6% for 6 miles doesnt sound too bad if I can avoid the 2 days of crossing the CA/OR mountain pass. A little bit of knuckle driving opposed to almost 2 days of knuckle driving sounds much better. It's just knowing whether or not as a novice driving a big rental truck like this would be a bad idea tackling the Cabbage area I guess is the big question...

So wow. I'm really in a quandary now as to which route to take. But I appreciate the input.

Hmm.. I guess it boils down to going thru California/Oregon and the long drawn out up down, up down of one big long mountain pass, but easy enough with not a lot of continuous knuckle driving down hill steep grades OR little to no long drawn out CA/OR mountain passes but going thru Cabbage/Blue Mountains right before Pendleton's steep grade? So long drawn out and easy mountains to hardly any mountains but one doozy, scary one at the end?

What's the best thing to do when your going down a steep grade anyway? And are we talking 6% down Cabbage for like miles and miles and miles? So should I drop it down into a lower gear? Or the lowest gear? It's the constant braking and worrying about burning up the brakes and trying not to go too fast down the hills that scares me the most.. I cant thank you enough for all the input and help. I did this trip in November 2013 and I swore I would never do it again. But it was a bigger truck and I had a car on a car carrier. I plan on leaving in 3 days. So no worries about snow. Just hot weather.

Or how about from Birmingham, AL dropping down to I-20 at Jackson, MI and driving I-20 past Dallas and Odessa TX and hooking up at I-10 then?

Hmm. Ok. So 10 to CA huh. Even if it means going south to 10 instead of heading North from the get go. I am actually driving from Cape Coral, FL but was going to drop something off to someone in Birmingham, AL. His cat. LOL. But that seems a rather drastic out of my way route just to drop off a cat if I really need to go the I-10 route.

So taking Hwy 99 up California instead of I-5 is better? I would think I-5 would be better for driving, what with 4 lanes or more opposed to Hwy 99? Or does Hwy 99 have 4 lanes? And wouldnt Hwy 99 have a lot more stops? At every City? Stop lights and so forth? Whereas, I-5 would be no stops?

I have to drive a 22 foot moving truck and pulling a car from Birmingham AL to Olympia, WA. I see that google maps has two routes to take. I am trying to avoid as many mountain passes as possible for obvious reasons. I drove a 26ft truck with car carrier in November down I-5 thru CA and did the whole Oregon, Calif mountain passes and was scared to death for 2 whole days.

One route has me going: Kansas I-70 to Colorado, then I-80 Wyoming to I-84 to Idaho and I-84 thru Oregon to Portland then I-5 to Olympia.

Other route goes more North. Kansas I-29, South Dakota I-90 thru Billings Montana, Idaho, Spokane, WA thru Stevens Pass down into Seattle area then I-5 south.

One other question. When I am going slowly up and down steep grades where you truckers are passing me going really fast, should I put my emergency lights on so you can see in advance I'm going really slow? I dont want to annoy the truckers.

Thanks in advance for your help to a woman driver going across country.