Going Coastal

We started our family road trip at 9 AM sharp on Friday. By “started” I mean that is the time we had the van packed and warming up. We loaded the kids, snapped ourselves in and prepared to leave.

“Wait!” I exclaimed. “I left my Diet Coke on the counter!” I unbuckled my seat belt and ran back inside to fetch my crutch.

We drove down the driveway and along our country road. We were at the four-way stop when I turned to Matthew and asked, “Did you happen to grab the hotel gift cards?” (We had cashed in Air Miles to use at a hotel.) No, he had not. He turned the van around we were soon back home. I unbuckled my seat belt and ran inside to grab the gift cards. I ran back to the van, buckled myself back in and turned to smile at Matthew. “We’re off!” I exclaimed. He put the van in drive, moved five feet and then put it in park.

“We need everyone’s passports.”

OF COURSE WE DO. Oh, that would have been a disaster should we not have brought them. Could you imagine the scene at the border? It would consist of a lot of snot and tears (on my part). I unbuckled my seat belt (again) and ran back into the house (again) and retrieved everyone’s passports.

We left our driveway for the final time at 9:23 am. Approximately.

We stopped in to visit with family in the ‘burbs of Vancouver for a Thanksgiving lunch/celebration of Emily’s birthday. It was good to see everyone and eat an amazing spread complete with cupcakes frosted with pink (of course) icing. We continued upon our merry way and ended up staying at a hotel recommended by Matthew’s sister. I had a suite, which meant that the kids were in a separate room. Yes. Yes, they were. This was awesome on so many levels.

We arrived at the outlets in time for their opening and followed our patent plan: Get all of the shopping for the kids done first and then take turns tending to the kidlets/doing solo shopping for ourselves. The kids needed a lot of clothes (Emily especially, that growing force of nature that she is) which meant that by the end of the kids’ segment, patience was wearing thin. Theirs, as well as mine. Matthew carted them away and I found myself child-free and crossing items off of my (tiny) list. I went to where the family has converged and switched places with Honey. He wandered back into the Outlets while I sat out on the grass with the kids.

Graham was building a Bionicle and Nathan and Emily were coloring. I was sitting in the sun and reading a book. I thought about how great my kids had been at traveling, at sleeping in a hotel room and with the whole shopping deal. I had yet to take any photos (apart from Twitpics) of our adventures and wondered if there would be anything to write about our weekend other than, “The kids were awesome and we had fun.”
This was then viewed by the Universe as a challenge. I have a feeling that she snapped her fingers and said, “Oh no you di’int.” She thought I was mocking her and oh, did she get her revenge.

We made our way to Portland on Saturday afternoon in the hopes of making it there close to dinner time. We stopped at an Applebee’s (First time ever) in Vancouver and were done and back in the van by 7:27. Approximately.

The plan was to book it to Powell’s books. After hearing about its wonder, Matthew wanted to go to there. Our kids are also obsessed with books, so we thought it would be a great excursion. I pulled out my handy dandy iPhone and Googled mapped the address. I also had Powell’s site open with directions to the store. We were set. (FAMOUS LAST WORDS.)

We were booking along down the I-5 and I had the Powell’s directions open. “As soon as we’re over the river, we turn a right on the Everett exit.” Easy, peasy. But we passed the river and there was no Everett exit; only signs about heading south to Salem. I looked at the directions again and realized that we had needed to turn onto the 405. A certain Husband tensed up but I reminded him that I had read the directions verbatim; the blame was equally shared. Aside from that, TAKE THE NEXT EXIT ALREADY.

We did, and after some more Google mapping, we saw that we were a mere few blocks from a bridge that would take us to where we needed to go. YES. We followed the map and…ended up going in the wrong direction. AGAIN. We pulled a left into a gas station and turned ourselves around. We followed the blue blip as it made its way to the red blip. We made it to where the two met and…I didn’t recognize the neighborhood from when I was there in August. Not only that, there was no Powell’s in sight; just a bunch of darkened buildings.

I looked up there website and deduced that I must have looked up the wrong location. Maybe the Hawthorne store was the one we needed to go to. I mapped it out, we drove over a bridge and clear across the city and found ourselves in yet another neighborhood that I did not recognize. There was a Powell’s alright, but it wasn’t the right one. WHAT THE HECK?

I called KerriAnne who (laughed that we were clear across town, and) gave me directions beck to the right side of town and to the correct Powell’s. I was a little confused because she told me we wanted to go to the Burnside store, which is what I had originally Googled. It turns out I hadn’t specified Burnside EAST and Burnside WEST so my oh-so-smart phone had decided I wanted to go East when, no, WEST WAS THE RIGHT ANSWER. I started relaying directions to Matthew and was still chatting with KerriAnne when he took a LEFT instead of a RIGHT and I had to get off the phone to figure out what to do next.

Luckily for the sake of our marriage, this time I managed to Google a map that finally got us to Powell’s. At 9PM, but better late than never. Or something.

The kids grabbed a bunch of new books and Matthew got the one he had come for. He was in awe at the size of the store and the abundance of books and wished we had more time. We both agreed that it was the kids of place that you came to without kids if you wanted to truly enjoy it. Beside, it was way past the kids’ bedtime and we still needed to find our hotel.

We returned to the van, I pulled out all of my papers with addresses on them and mapped out our route on the phone. The kids were getting punchy so I held up my phone so they could watch the blue dot move closer to the red dot. As we got closer their excitement levels rose. “WE’RE ALMOST THERE!” I told Matthew that I sure hoped our hotel was where the red dot said it was. (This is what the kids these days call foreshadowing.) We rounded the corner and did not see our hotel.

Instead, we saw the Powell’s Bookstore on Hawthorne.

I made Matthew pull over so that I could gather my thoughts and possibly GET THE RIGHT ADDRESS. After triple checking it we set off, back to the same neighborhood from whence we had just come so that we could get on the I-5. We saw the sign for the I-5 and did a cheer because we were FINALLY on the right course. We came over the crest of a hill only to see…that the on-ramp was closed. Yes, really.

I mapped it out (AGAIN) as we drove through downtown Portland (AGAIN) and this time, by golly, WE MADE IT.

After checking in and hauling the kids and all of our belongings up into our room I turned to Matthew and lost it. As in, laughed so hard that I slid down the wall and sat on the floor with tears rolling down my cheeks. The kids were laughing too and Graham piped up with, “When we were lost, I was kind of worried about all of the sketchy people we saw riding bicycles.” Nathan chimed in, “Phew! That was a close one!”

It was a far later night that we had planned and the kids were up at their usual time but we soldiered through breakfast and packed up our van. We had made plans to meet up with Kerri and then head to the Oregon coast. Kerri had emailed me directions so there was NO WAY we could get lost. We pulled out of the hotel and headed toward the on-ramp for the I-5 only to see that…it was closed. Seriously, Portland. Why all of the closings, with no detour signs?  Matthew decided to follow the dude in front of us who led us through some back roads and to the I-5.

We met up with KerriAnne and I rode with her for the two-hour drive to the Coast for some long-awaited girl-chat time. Those two hours felt like twenty minutes. Kerri summed it up far better than I could, but there’s something about the heart connection that you make with blogging friends. The real time with them is beyond description. I’m pretty sure that Matthew wouldn’t say the same about his solo drive with the kids. Ecola State Park and Cannon beach were better than we had hoped for. It was a sunny, warm and absolutely glorious day. The kids were amazed with it all and had a great time horsing around with Kerri’s dog Iggy. He was equally enamored with them.

The rest of the trip was more of the boring awesome, including safe travels and arriving home with that feeling you have when you walk away from every day life and get to breathe again. This feeling is only to be SMACKED IN THE FACE WITH LIFE UPON WALKING IN THE DOOR, but I’m clinging to that vacation feeling with all that I can. Do you know what helps? Photos, that’s what.

The kids traveled so amazingly well that we’ve talked about taking more road trips with them (Don’t hate me because my kids are awesome).

To make the drive even better we might have me drive and let Matthew be the Navigator. You know, to keep the marriage intact.

*More photos on Flickr, per usual.