Puyallup (pyoo-AL-up)

This is a small town southeast of Tacoma.  I pronounce it Pile Up because once you see this sign traffic comes to a crawl.  It remains a crawl until you get through Tacoma.  Speed picks up again until just before the Federal Way off ramp which is a bout 12 miles.  We tried to leave home early enough to avoid the traffic jam, but I don't think there ever is a time that traffic through the Tacoma/Seattle area isn't a total cluster.

But wait, once you get through Tacoma and are entering the southern end of Seattle we see a sign notifying us that there is a variable speed zone ahead.  We do not have these signs in Oregon, so we were not quite sure what this meant.  About a half a mile later we found out the meaning

This is an optimistic image.  Even in the HOV lane we never got faster than 45 and actually the speed dropped down as far as 30.  These signs change without notice by 5 MPH increments.  It really didn't matter what the speed was, we never got an opportunity to achieve the limit even at its lowest.  Once out of Se-hell-ttle it was smooth sailing up to Everett and on to Mukilteo to catch our first ferry to Clinton on the southern tip of Widbey Island.