Thanksgiving travel rule 1: Never leave at rush hour

We planned to leave our home in San Francisco for our family road trip to Seattle at 2 p.m. on Tuesday. But of course, everything took longer—the packing, the cleaning, the car tuneup—than expected. We didn’t actually have the car packed and the kids loaded until 6 p.m.

“This is crazy. It’s rush hour. Let’s eat dinner in the city and then leave later to skip the traffic,” my husband pleaded.

“No! Let’s just get going. The traffic won’t be that bad.” I was ready and eager to get going. We were driving all the way to Ashland, Ore., that night—five and a half hours from San Francisco—and I didn’t want to be on the road late at night.

I was wrong. It took us one hour to travel 11 miles from our home in San Francisco to Berkeley, just across the bay.

As we exited out of the traffic to grab dinner at the Mexican restaurant Picante, my 4-year-old son, Dante, asked, “Are we in Ashland? Are we going to the Best Western hotel?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that we still had 5 hours and 20 minutes ahead us and probably more like seven hours with the traffic.

At 2 a.m. we rolled into the Best Western Windsor Inn in Ashland.

Welcome! You're the last ones to check in. So glad you made it!" the front-desk clerk said.

Rule 1: Never drive at rush hour on the week of Thanksgiving, unless you want to sit in traffic.