Last Friday, Lucie and I joined our friends Heather and Micah and their girls Penny and Ramona for a spring break getaway to Lincoln City, Oregon and a calm weekend of tidepools and sunbreaks, games and seafood dinners.
Heather and I set aside trip dates on the calendar back in February, then I blinked and it was the night before departure. We called each other on the phone, “Did you?” “Nope. Not me.” “Not at all.” “I didn’t plan a single meal, I haven’t sorted clothes or groceries…” “I’m packing blind and winging it once we get there.” I paraphrase slightly, but you get the idea. We’re both moms with many irons in the fire, and sometimes getting out of dodge is an exercise in lunacy tempered with reckless optimism.
It’s not at all like it used to be, planning and prepping endlessly beforehand. I guess I’m on my own little pendulum swing these days: no obsessing allowed when there aren’t enough hours in the day. Throw caution to the wind, buckle the baby in her car seat, and drive.
Wine Country With the Littles
Heather and her girls planned to carpool out from Portland to the coast with Lucie and me, and by the time I finished work, picked up Lu, and met Heather at my house, it was 3pm on Friday afternoon and my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten much of anything all day.
An hour+ of exiting Portland (navigating spring break traffic on I-84, I-5, and Hwy-99) and we finally earned ourselves a pitstop: Newberg Burgerville. The perfect spot to teach Lucie the guilty pleasures of road food.
Then the snarls of Dundee. (Oregon Wine Country: a scenic place for a daily traffic jam.)
Ramona (three years old) starts calling out from the backseat, and we know it’s now or never: I put my blinker on and start to pass stalled cars, skirting around other drivers on the righthand shoulder. A few honks of fury (from them, not me), and then I turned into Duck Pond Cellars’ driveway. Heather zoomed Ramona in as fast as she could and reemerged a few minutes later: one preschooler successfully dry, bladder emptied.
Lucie and Penny on a stretch break in Duck Pond Cellars’ parking lot. Note: Lucie’s wearing her hand-me-down Whale Sweater from when Ramona was a wee one.
The drizzle picked up.
We buckled all three kiddos back into their row of boosters and baby seats, and continued west toward Hwy 18.
“Are we there yet?” called six year old Penny just as we entered the forest on the other side of Sheridan.
No, no we weren’t.
But at least we were out of traffic.
And maybe just a little closer to that glass of wine at the end of the rainbow…
Go-To Drive-Through: At least if we’re going to give in and eat fast, the food options in Oregon are reasonable. Burgerville partners with suppliers like Bob’s Red Mill, Country Natural Beef, Diestel Farms, the Hazelnut Growers of Oregon (hey-o!), Liepold Farms and the like to offer a better take on the production of fast food.
Vino: Many thanks to the kind ladies at the Duck Pond Cellars tasting room for making an emergency pitstop bearable.
Roadtrip Tunes: My favorite Kiwi artist, Brooke Fraser. (So happy Heather and I were able to see her Portland show in January!)
Oh, no. The story’s not over. It’s just that “no time left in the day” stage. Stay tuned for more entries in the ongoing twoOtourthecoast series featuring stories and photos from “The People’s Coast.” (Or from the road-trips *to* the coast, as the case may be.)
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