This is a weekly program with commentary on current issues.

I took a few days off to drive my wife and dog to their Pacific Northwest retreat.

The scenic route this wasn’t. Once we elbowed our way out of Smogland, we got the payoff: Several hundred dazzling miles of I-5.

My wife knows everything about this stretch: rest-area locations, In-N-Out hours (it’s a travesty arrive when they’re closed), exactly when to buy gas (only after travel ling 350 miles). Always the same. But not this time.

Interstate 5 has never looked better. Hundreds and hundreds of miles have been resurfaced. It was like hitching a ride on a magnificent charcoal-and-yellow snake as it slithered toward the Oregon border. But nobody else came along.

I don’t mean nobody. But there was definitely something missing. I’m sure many of you have taken long, boring road trips where you’d pass the time trying to spot, say, the most oddball or distant license plate. It didn’t take long before my wife and I were playing this game, with RVs.

We weren’t looking for freakish RVs. Or the RV that had come the farthest. We were just looking for any RV traveling north or south on I-5 in July 2008. It was as if they had become extinct.