Cannon Beach, OR

August 3, 2017

Place: Portland, Weather: 107 and sunny, Cannon Beach 80 and sunny

Hours Driving: 3 hours

States Drive Thru: Oregon

Miles: 106 miles to beach and back.

Restaurants: Slappy Cakes, Yami Sushi

Movies:

Games:

Books: American Born Chinese (Ben), Gravity Falls journal (Matt), Dog On It (Biddy)

Thump, thump, thump. Creak, creak, thump. Bang, bang, bang, 5:30 AM? WTF? What's the Flipside? Us on the other side of the noise. This went on all morning. I would have sworn they were doing construction above our heads. I was so mad. I got up and hammered on the wall. We all tried to sleep longer. Finally, I just got up to take a shower. Grrr. Once everyone was up, we headed out for breakfast to a place called Slappy Jacks as recommended by our friends Wendy and Kevin. What a cute place where you choose your pancake batter ( I chose gluten free), then choose your ingredients (like chocolate chips, bananas, bacon) and then choose final toppings like whip cream. Then you cook it up at your table on a griddle. So cool. The pancakes were good too.

After breakfast we took the kids to Powell's books, a six story book store. Pretty soon it will be like a museum since there aren't many books store anymore. The kids all chose books. Matthew who loves to read had to travel to all floors. Neat place. We walked around downtown Portland a bit and took the boys to the Nike store. Oh, they also have bike rentals here like Seattle (more expensive) but they are called Biketown (place nike swoosh here). Clever. Say it like Nike. See pics.

Yes it was 107 in Portland today but we didn't really think it felt that hot. Maybe its a dryer heat. Regardless we had already decided to beat the heat by driving to the coast to a beach called Cannon Beach where it was in the 80s. Before we left, we grabbed our suits and such. Paul went upstairs to talk to the people banging around. Strangely, he found a little old man reading a book. He said something about the noise and the man said, "Its just me reading my book." He's lying or something. On our way down, a gaggle of young children came bounding up the stairs bouncing a basketball. Ah-HA!! He was lying. They went right up to that room. Grrrr. We went to the car but forgot something so Paul went back to get it. Along came grandma noisy. He stopped her and told her our dilemma. She was very nice but astonished that the kids were making such noise up in the loft. Seriously. I am not kidding how loud they were. We will see at 5:30 tomorrow.

Off to the beach. We are so glad we did. It was gorgeous on the coast. What a nice little town with restaurants, shops and awesome looking houses and hotels on the beach. We really liked it there. We spent the afternoon on the beach. We headed back to Portland for dinner. We agreed on sushi so we hit a spot by our hotel. Not-so-much. When you walk into a warm restaurant with a sushi bar in the middle and a conveyer belt of sushi traveling around it past all the people sitting around it (lets say 30 or more people and 75 different sushis), turn around quickly and get the heck out of there. Eww, yuck, unsanitary, disgusting. We called our friend Mike Erb who lives here and he recommended a place to us near where he lives. It was much better. No Dave's sushi. After we ate we went to the park with a fountain and kids got their feet wet. Mike and Jen met us for ice cream in the park. It was a nice visit. Now we are home and exhausted. Remember, home is where the van is....I mean, clan is.

Tomorrow we are off to Boise, ID.Read more