Today was our best day of getting up and at 'em the whole trip, hands down! The crew of this roadtrip are not what one would call “morning people”. Which is fine, except when things close at 5-6pm because its now past labor day and we didn’t get going till noon-ish, you got a little problem and have to hurry. And no one likes to hurry while on vacation. But not today! Today we got in the car and were on the road by 8:15am. No one took an hour to do their hair and no dilly-dallying at breakfast. Just out of the hotel and into the car. I wanted to get out the Cannon Beach (only a quick 1 hour drive), and eat breakfast out there and then go see the beach made famous from the Goonies.

We ate an awesome breakfast at the
Lazy Susan Café. Fancy waffles and omelets and blackberry scones. It was well worth getting on the road early for. We were so incredibly full that we needed a good stroll on the beach to work things off as well as checking out the haystack and the tide pools around it. The fog that had still been out when we were driving had lifted over breakfast and the sunshine was coming out. It was a great morning to be out on the water. We spent an hour hanging out, then got a coffee to go and started to make our way to Portland to go to their famous weekend market.


Now there wasn’t much in Cannon Beach as far as services. I’m sure there
was a gas station somewhere out in the town, but we didn’t see it and I assumed we would see a gas station somewhere along a way. The odometer said we had 68 miles left in the tank. It was something like 75 to Portland, so I figured it would be ok. Around 15 miles left in the tank and the fact that we were still surrounded by national forest on all sides, I started to get a little bit concerned. Not super concerned, but just a little bit. I started to do silly “strategic” things like letting the car coast down hills and up hills before I started to hit the gas. Trying not to break in anyway (which is hard because some people feel the need to break constantly *I shaky my fist*). About 9 miles from Tank Empty, the trees yielded and we hit fields, and I start to feel less nervous. And at ~8 miles, we finally came across a gas station. Triina was a whole lot more relieved. I was actually kinda disappointed. The adventure and curious side of me wanted to see how far we could push it. You know, Kramer-style in Season 9, episode 11 The Dealership. Was the 8 miles for real? Or was there an additional 30 mile secret buffer in there? I will now never know. I do admit though, for us getting to Portland in a timely manner, it was probably for the best.


Once we got to Portland we left the car and headed for the Saturday Market. The Saturday Market has something like 200 vendors of art, clothing, jewelry, food, and hipster items. I originally thought the farmer’s market was part of it, but that turned out to be in a different part of the city. We took an hour or so to stroll through the rows of booths of the more high-end artistic/professional vendors. We got some great Nepal momos as a snack. Then went into the second part of the market, which was more like imports and the cheap clothing/incense portion of the market. I got a hipster hat and a necklace. Triina got a hipster shirt with a tree on it. Triina and Niina looked at Indian/hippie imports and I got a tarot card reading as the incense orders were beginning to bother me (apparently I am getting a new job and a bf this year. And a baby. I’m hoping this lady is 2 for 3. I’m keeping all body parts crossed on that last one)
Niina was disappointed because the charm type bracelet she had been looking for hadn’t really materialized and also that she was promised more of a flea market and wanted to go to some thrift shops and to look for some sort of Dr. Who magic wand(?). The search for this wand was kinda out of control. We kept telling her maybe a comic book shop would have one, but she kept insisting it could be found in a book store, and we were like, but bookstore don’t really exist anymore, we just ordered them on Amazon.
We walked past all the amazing food truck stands Portland is so famous for and got some tasty thai food and then decided our feet were exhausted and we needed to just relax as part of enjoying the sunny afternoon. We found a cute little wine bar that specialized in Oregon wines, specifically the Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs (which also made the list this year as top places to go wine tasting). The valley was along I-5 inland and we, doing the HWY1/101, were on the coast, so we missed that whole region. Chilling out at a nice air conditioned bar totally hit the spot. We had our final wine tasting of the trip, Niina and I had the Oregon Pinot Noir flight and Triina just relaxed with a local white. The Pinots were excellent. Relaxed and ready to go again, it was time to take care of some Apple business.

Triina was having the best day ever. She got to go to hipster shops, she got to have thai food truck soup, and the best of all, she was getting a new Macbook Air. (*Awwwwwwww* *
sounds of angels singing*) Yup, with Oregon’s tax free shopping laws, it was advantageous for Triina to get her new laptop tax free and with a tidy work discount in addition, that I get from working at my company for myself and family. So Triina got hooked up! We sent Niina to go shopping while we took care of business in the rest of the mall and she found her Dr. Who wand. This is the wand she had been looking for since the beginning from the trip. Woohoo!

With all our shopping done and a peck-ish but not starving craving for food, we went to my favorite pizza place for dinner
Ken’s Artisan Pizza. This place does things right and its so good. Ken is like the Bo Jackson of food. Ken knows pastries, Ken knows bread, Ken knows pizza. If you can bake it, he can make it. We had a final great dinner on the last night of the road trip complete with dessert. With bellies full and wallets empty, it was a short 2 and a half hour straight shot drive on I-5 home to Seattle.
By 2am we were all snuggled up in nice warm beds in my cozy condo and dreaming about all the places we had seen, the food we had eaten, the wine we'd drank, the friends we'd met, the sunshine that had lit our path, and the open road; all of which had been so good to us.
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