Travelers were ready to take on the holiday weekend, but some didn’t prepare for the snow and ice that came with it.
“For the last few hours I’ve been sitting on the freeway with the kids and everyone else for hours,” said Brittany Schulte.
Schulte was part of a miles-long standstill after I-90 was shut down in both directions for hours on Friday due to cars and trucks spinning out.
“There’s a lot of them up there that don’t have chains because I have four-wheel-drive four-wheel drive, not four-wheel stop,” said Darla Wright who was traveling home to Cle Elum.
Traffic added another hour and a half to Wright’s drive, but it’s not her first run in traffic back-ups.
In the past, she’s been stuck for up to eight hours on I-90.
“It’s a mess. It’s a total mess and then you got all the trucks on the side of the road that don’t chain up up because they think, I can do it. It’s like 10 miles. Yeah, it’s 10 miles of pure hell,” Wright said.
The wait wasn’t an issue for the Schander family. Because of the road closures, Christmas came early.
“We have Christmas presents back here, so we thought we would just open up a game and let them play and just ride it out,” she said.