Road Trip!

Lars, being a mostly predictable but sometimes VERY random soul suggested last Wednesday that we should go buy a tent and take a little family trip to Astoria, Oregon, three hours north. Oh, did I mention right now? Great idea, except that Leah has school on Thursday and I'm teaching the last day of preschool and we don't have a tent and a million other reasons going on a totally spontaneous road trip wouldn't work. So I convinced him to just keep his shorts on for two weeks until school was out and then we could take whatever random road trips popped into his brain.

But after a few minutes I thought...what the heck. Leah can miss a day of school, I can change preschool to Friday...why not? So Lars got on-line and found three places along the coast on the way to Astoria that we could stop and camp or rent a Yurt for the night. A what?! It sounded like a Dr. Seuss creation. Apparently anyone who grew up in Oregon knows what a Yurt is. Personally I had never heard of one before, so after being flabbergasted at my ignorance, Lars found a picture on-line of these fabulous creations. It's like a Tee Pee, except a dome instead of a pointy top. (You can even purchase one off the Internet!) He called to reserve one but they had already closed their reservations for the day but informed us there were still five available on a first come first serve basis.

So we raced around and packed. I found a backpack for the girls that still had clothes in it from the last time we visited Grandma, so I figured that would do. I ran to the store and bought hot dogs and s'mores stuff and good camping food. I called all the preschool moms and told them I was changing it to Friday and we were ready to go. One of the moms offered to lend us their tent as a plan B, in case the Yurt didn't pan out. I thanked her and said we would probably pick it up on our way out of town. I told Lars about the tent and he said not to worry, there were two other places along the coast to get one. OK, so we left. Plan A-yurt Plan B-tent Plan C-hotel :)

We headed west until we hit Highway 101, then headed north enjoying a beautiful scenic drive up the Oregon coast line. It is quite a lovely drive...unless you suffer from motion sickness. We all did pretty well for the first hour and a half and then Yaya started complaining that her tummy hurt. A few minutes later, her throat hurt. Two seconds later she shouted a panicked, "I'm gonna barf!" and erupted. With lightning speed I dumped out the contents of the nearest plastic bag and dove over Heidi to the back seat miraculously catching most of the, er...contents in the bag. Meanwhile, Lars stomped on the brakes and whipped off the road as I balanced between the two middle seats with both hands cupped beneath Yaya's mouth. Lars jumped out of the car and I yelled, "Open the door!" He did and I threw the bag-o-barf outside. By this time Naomi, who was sharing the back seat with Yaya, is clutching her throat and yelling "I'm gonna barf! I'm gonna barf!" So Lars got Naomi out of the car and thankfully once she was out of smelling range regained a calm stomach. We got Yaya out of her seat and while I had the pleasure of scrubbing barf out of car seat straps (I'm dry heaving here) Lars undressed Yaya and went searching for clean clothes. Well, apparently the bag of clothes from the trip to Grandma's house was the dirty laundry bag. So we redressed Yaya in some pink polka dot pants and a white thermal shirt with a giant chocolate milk stain down the front of it. I put her barf clothes in a bag and tied it to the bike rack on the roof and we all piled back in the car and kept on going.

Not too much later we entered Cape Lookout. After ten minutes down another very windy road we got to the Ranger Station and asked to rent a yurt. All taken. They suggested another camp site 20 miles south. No thank you. So we just headed north again. "Well, I guess hind site is 20/20" Lars laments. "What do you mean?" I asked. "We should have got a tent before we left." "I thought you said there were two places along the way to get one." I countered. "No. I meant there were two places other places to get a yurt." Right. Well, there went Plan A AND Plan B. On to Plan C. Driving up the coastline, EVERY hotel has an ocean view which gives them reason to charge double what they would otherwise. Finally after we had pulled in and out of fifteen different places asking their rates, someone tipped us off to a lovely little place called The Bunk House. We got a room with three beds and a kitchenette for $55. Sweet. The girls were thrilled and asked if we could move in permanently.

Since this has officially turned into the longest posting ever...I'll end here and continue with a part II.