A Spontaneous Vacation

Remember how I mentioned that Adam's department finished up a new product last week? And also that we wanted to visit Oregon sometime? Well, last Friday, Claire and I had a pretty normal morning. We went to a prenatal appointment and swim lessons. As we were eating lunch, Adam called and said that his boss had given everyone the rest of the day off. He got home right after Claire went down for a nap and we somehow got the idea to take a spontaneous trip to Portland. So, we booked a hotel, packed our bags, and hit the road as soon as Claire woke up! 

I've always heard that you can find great last minute hotel deals on Hot Wire or Price Line, but we've always found that hotels.com works best for us. Because Claire goes to bed earlier than we do, we like to stay in suites and we like to make sure they are real suites, not the "suites" with a half wall between the bedroom and sitting area. So, we use hotels.com to know exactly what we're getting into. They offer cash back on Ebates too and I've had lots of success searching for coupon codes.

Anyway, the bad part of spontaneous vacations is that you don't always think things through. Like maybe leaving during rush hour traffic wasn't the best idea? It took us two hours to make it Tacoma {usually 45 minutes away} and Claire threw up three times on the way there. But after we had dinner and walked around a mall for a bit {where Claire was adorably hyper and dancing to each store's music} the rest of the drive was great. And Claire is totally comfortable sleeping in unfamiliar spaces now, so getting her down for bed was a breeze. 

We slept in past eight on Saturday morning {what?!} and headed to the Tillamook Factory. 

We had grilled cheese for lunch at their cafe.

Took the self-guided tour and browsed in the gift shop.

And because we clearly don't believe in too much dairy consumption, had ice cream for dessert. 

 We took Highway One up the coast for a while and stopped at the closest public beach. This was definitely the highlight of our trip because it was the first time we've seen the official Pacific Ocean! I mean, we've seen Puget Sound and the Georgia Strait between Vancouver Island and the main land, but never the real deal.



It turns out the Pacific is really foggy and very, very cold. But Claire still loved it!

Here's a shot from the highway for comparison. {I didn't dare open the window since Claire had just fallen asleep on the way back.} See the crazy thick layer of fog?



When we got back to the city, we had dinner at Cartlandia, a group of twenty-ish different food trucks.



Claire was a big fan of the nutella strawberry crepe we split for dessert.



After dinner, we headed to Powell's City of Books, supposedly the largest independent bookstore in the world.



We only looked in the kids' section, but it was huge! We just started collecting the "my book house" series {because I found one at Goodwill} and were happy to find two in their used book section for $4 a piece.



On Sunday morning, we went to Mass at the National Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother. Or just the grotto as Portlanders call it. Definitely not the high point of the weekend. Claire is well-behaved in Mass about 80% of the time and we rarely have to take her out. But this really crowded and really small chapel was basically a nightmare for toddler Mass behavior. We also had to sit in the choir loft, which made things even worse because we couldn't easily escape. Never again!



The chapel and the main grotto were on the bottom floor.



Then you could take an elevator up to more gardens, the abbey, and a mediation chapel.







We had lunch at Burgerville {an Oregon chain that's kind of like Five Guys; not quite as tasty but a million steps up from McDonald's} and then made the drive home in exactly three hours!

Adam having Monday off too was amazing because we were able to get unpacked, do all the vacation laundry, go grocery shopping, bring a meal to friends who just had twins, and have a Labor Day barbecue with more friends. The perfect end-of-summer weekend.

We do a lot of traveling, but the vast majority is visiting family or occasionally trips with family. We have been on one other "just us, just for fun" vacation in our three years of marriage, which was also only 1.5 days long. We definitely plan to make it back to Oregon again one day. I think our first stop will be Multnomah Falls!