In 1964/65 I was driving from San Diego to Portland, Oregon visit my mother and friends.  I had a 1955 Potniac and thirty days leave from the Navy.  Most of I-5 had been completed as I recall.  There's not much to do, other than listen to the radio, when you're driving by yourself.  I did see a guy driving on I-805 here in San Diego playing a guitar.

     There was a news item on the radio about someone in central California who had swerved to avoid hitting a deer, and ran off the freeway.  I don't remember if this person was injured or killed, but the car was totaled.

     Some time after midnight I was a few miles south of Grants Pass, Oregon.  Traffic was very light, and it was very dark.  All of a sudden a deer jumped onto the roadway in front of me.  I froze because of what I had heard on the radio a few hours earlier.  I hit the deer a glancing blow with the right side headlight.   The deer took off, and I had a broken headlight.  I stopped in Grants Pass to replace the headlight.

     I would not want to hit anything with either of the cars we now have.  Both have composite headlights, and they are expensive to replace.  Several years ago I was behind a truck on the freeway, and when the truck drove over the half sheet of plywood laying on the pavement....  If I had been back ten or twenty feet it would have gone through the windshield.  Instead, the grill and bumper hit it as it was coming up, and it went under the car.  The damage: one headlight, both driving lights, the air dam, one motor mount, the starter, and who knows what else got dented.  The headlight assembly itself was $145.00.

     On our August/September 2000 trip we saw only one deer.  In 1994 I saw herds of deer along the roads near Elsie, Oregon.  I drove very cautiously.