Northbound

RUBBER MEETS THE ROAD: Today it was time to head back up north to home in Seattle. We said goodbye to Siletz, Ore., a few minutes after 9 a.m.

I was a bit nervous about how much snow we were going to see in our travels. And while the sides of the road were snow covered all the way to Portland, the roads were clear, except for some slush in the Coast Range (with a peak elevation of 770 at the pass next to Cline Hill, which is 1076 feet).

By noon, we were in Vancouver, USA. We stopped at one of our favorite pizza shops - The Blind Onion. Their mascot is Fred, a blind onion. Annabelle wasn't long in drawing her own version of Fred and a couple of friends.

We had the pleasure of G&G R. for company during lunch. After a nice visit it was back to the Honda for another 3 hour drive. Things were pretty smooth sailing from Vancouver to Seattle. In fact, north of Olympia or so, the roads were dry. We made it home in good time. There's no doubt you're in Seattle when you see this sign:

And now, we await Snowmageddon.

EBB AND FLOW: Today, NASA announced the new names for GRAIL A and B, the twin lunar mapping spacecraft. A class at Emily Dickinson Elementary School in Bozeman, Mont., won the naming contest, suggesting Ebb and Flow.

CJ and Annabelle had submitted Castor and Pollux, but I have to admit, Ebb and Flow seems like a good choice, since the spacecraft are using gravity to map the moon, and it's the moon's gravitational pull that results in tidal changes here on Earth.

In all, 900 classrooms and more than 11,000 students from 45 states, as well as Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, participated in a contest that began in October 2011 to name the twin lunar probes.

Here's a photo of Leland Melvin, NASA Associate Administrator for Education, left, Maria Zuber, GRAIL Prinicipal Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and James Green, Director of the Planetary Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, applauding the winning students during the big announcement.  (Photo Credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers)