Vacation? Yes! A vacation!

So, we’re back from a week’s vacation. Not surprisingly, I feel completely exhausted. What is it about vacations that completely and thoroughly wipe one out?

Oh yes, I remember now: kids. When you are on vacation, you are on call 24/7. No preschools, no babysitters, and rarely a room or a moment to yourself.

It was fun anyhow.

We went on a drive trip up to Portland, then down the Oregon Coast to Mendocino, then home today. A full week of doing about 1500 miles.

Bonus: Simon has started talking up a storm. He repeated words we said constantly. The most hilarious version of this was when I promised Sophia we would get ice cream at our next rest stop. (Not to bribe her or anything. Just to get some ice cream. Mommy wanted ice cream too.) For the next half an hour of drive time, Simon chanted, “Choco cone! Choco cone!” Over. And over. And over.

Downside: Somehow, and I have no idea how, the spammers who have pretty much left my site alone for the past few weeks hit the comments section with a vengeance the day we left. Thank goodness we had internet access at the beginning and the end of the trip to take care of that as much as I could. If you happen to see comments for Vi*gra/Meri*ia/the like, please let me know.

Anyhow, if you are interested in our doings, continue apace…

(Warning! Excessively long, talky entry with photos follows!)

Monday

We head north to Fairfield. Why? Because there’s a Chick-Fil-A in Fairfield, the only fast food that Darin will take himself and his loved ones dozens of miles out of the way to go get. We used to go to the one at the mall south of LAX periodically.

Upside: It’s really, really, really good fried chicken.
Downside: the chain is run by fundamentalists. However, there is no proselytizing with the really great chicken.

We continue driving north, me reading bits about parts of northern Northern California (if the Bay Area is “Northern California,” what the hell is Humboldt?) as we go. The kids remain pretty darn cheerful, despite going for very long stretches of time. We stop in Redding, at the Turtle Bay Exploration Park, to let the kids out and stretch our legs.

Upside: Even though we don’t enter the park proper (paying the admission fee), there are turtles in the gift shop. Plus toilets. And air conditioning.
Downside: It is approximately 115 degrees Celsius in the shade. Redding is the hottest place in California and I choose to stop there?

We finally drag our sorry butts into Ashland, Oregon, where we have booked a room at the Blue Moon Bed and Breakfast. Specifically, we have “the Cottage,” which has a living room, kitchenette, back porch, and bedroom. We meet the proprietors, Dean and Scott, and then head on into Ashland for dinner.

Sophia and Simon make themselves right at home at the Blue Moon

It’s a slight walk, about five minutes. We end up at the Standing Stone Brewing Company, which has something I’ve never seen before: an entire bookcase devoted to kids’ toys and games, to keep tots occupied.

In the morning, Dean cooks an outstanding breakfast of corn mixed with eggs. Very tasty. The kids don’t eat theirs, of course. This becomes a running theme on this trip that will reach a head toward the end.

Upside: Wonderful little tourist town that we hear has some good theater.
Downside: We’ll look for some the next time we go back. We’ll look reeeeeeal hard.

Tuesday

We drive from Ashland to Portland, stopping at Turtles Bar and Grill in Eugene for some grub. Once again, the bookcase full of toys and games. Is this a theme in Oregon? It’s a damn smart maneuver, I’ll tell you that much.

During the drive we see pretty much the following: trees, mountains, some farms. The stereotype I’ve always had of Oregon is that on the edges live the spotted-owl-loving lefties, and in the middle are the gun-toting rednecks. Surprisingly, everything we see confirms this, especially when we get stuck behind the grimy pickup with the decal that says, “If it’s got tits or wheels, it’s trouble!”

We get into Portland in plenty of time to do the tourist thing, which in our case is, “Go to the Gap and buy Darin some new clothes, and while we’re at it get Sophia some new clothes, and what the hell, Mommy too.” We are staying at the Embassy Suites Downtown Portland, which is in a beautiful historic building. The only downside of our room is that it’s the last one left in Portland because of the IEEE 802 standards conference. The room has two double beds. Which means Darin and I get to co-sleep with the kids, who are not proficient at bed-sharing yet.

Upside: Portland is wonderful! Very clean and it feels safe. The people seemed pretty laidback too.
Downside: I was too tired after all our driving to fully appreciate Portland. Also: I didn’t make it to Powell’s! And it was about five blocks from our hotel!

Wednesday

The valet dents our car when we check out. Oops.

We go to the Oregon Zoo and spend the first half an hour or so at the sand box, where Sophia digs in with about five newfound friends. Darin and I think it’s pretty hilarious that we’ve come all this way for sand. We eventually walk to see Simon’s choice, the elephant (which he is currently pronouncing “Momiya,” but he definitely means elephant), and Sophia’s, the giraffe. There is a new family farm open at the Zoo, which has goats and sheep and chickens.

My little Future Farmer of America

During our Zoo visit, Simon demonstrates in spades the talent that will vex us the rest of the trip: once he is at all free, he will take off at top speed at any direction away from Mommy or Daddy, most preferably toward a street. He cries whenever we produce the stroller, but until he learns the rules, the stroller it is.

We then drive from Portland to the Oregon coast, passing through Salem and a number of small towns. We also pass approximately six million Indian casinos. I am a knee-jerk liberal in support of “sovereign nations” and all, but Jesus F’ing Christ these casinos are a blight. They all had full parking lots, so clearly they’re doing well. It’s just depressing seeing so many people being so stupid and throwing their money away. Gambling has been called “a tax on stupidity” and I think that’s about right. I understand a lot of vices, but I have to admit that gambling leaves me completely cold.

We check into the Inn at Otter Crest, a little resort on the side of a cliff. It’s built with one building pretty much looming over the next, so that every room gets a fairly dramatic ocean view. Instead of the room we originally book, I ask for one of the suites, which is actually a loft arrangement: pull-out couch in the downstairs living room, king size bed upstairs. There’s a “tram,” a kind of sidewise-moving elevator that you can take from the bottom level, where we were, to the top level. This is, needless to say, the highlight of our visit.

The second highlight is the kids’ playground right near our condo. Nothing special: a standard plastic jungle gym with a ship theme. The kids spend a gigantic amount of time on it. Basically, Darin and I should have just found a place where we could relax and the kids could play on jungle gyms all day, because that would have been the perfect vacation

Upside: Gorgeous scenery.
Downside: The kids do not behave well at dinner, which really annoys me to no end because all I want to do is eat.

Thursday

We check out of Otter Crest and head down toward Newport, where the Oregon State Aquarium is. The first thing we need is breakfast, so we head to the Panini Bakery, which has wonderful looking croissants, but not the pancakes that Sophia demands. So after much Sturm Und Drang (and driving around Newport), we finally find the highly recommended The Whale’s Tail, which boasts poppyseed pancakes. Good lord, those are good. Yum.

Simon falls asleep, so Darin takes Sophia into the Oregon State Aquarium, former home of Keiko the Whale. Evidently the Newport scene exploded when Keiko showed up, but now she’s gone and things have calmed back down. The Aquarium folks have a sense of humor though:

How many visitors bother to read this sign?

Simon wakes up just as Darin and Sophia are leaving the Aquarium, so we let them play a little in the courtyard, then bundle them with much protest back into the car for the gigantic car trip we have to do that day. Our original plan was to do a lot of driving on the first leg of the trip, then spend the rest of the time winding our way back slowly. Unfortunately, we didn’t consult a map well enough before planning Thursday’s drive, which turns out to be over six hours long.

We stop at the Outside In, an indoor kids’ playground in Coos Bay, where the kids go nuts for an hour. This is also the site of the famed “choco cone.”

We stop for dinner at…wow, I don’t even remember. Sophia loves the clam chowder and asks for it at every meal thereafter. Simon runs around the whole time. Mommy goes crazy.

I drive the last leg of the trip, from wherever-we-had-dinner to Arcata (pronounced “Ar-cay-tah,” evidently). We stay at the Hotel Arcata, which is right on the plaza at the center of town. We arrive at ten at night and the kids are wide awake and ready to party. Arcata is a college town (Humboldt State), and down the block from the hotel are a bunch of well-frequented college town bars. The Hotel Arcata is a beautiful old building that has clawfoot tubs but doesn’t have air conditioning, which isn’t a problem except we have to open the windows right over those drinking college students! As a measure of how tired we are, we all fall asleep immediately anyhow. And wake up to a couple of homeless guys in the plaza yelling at one another.

Arcata is not our favorite stop on the tour. I am assured later on that Arcata is really quite nice and I should give it another shot.

Upside: We see a lot of the Oregon coast.
Downside: Leaving a six-plus hour drive until late in the afternoon. Very, very, very foolish.

Friday

We leave Arcata and its screaming homeless guys and go to the Avenue of the Giants, a state park filled with gigantic redwoods. The kids enjoy running in the forest and throwing stones at the river; Mommy does not enjoy the mosquitoes very much. (I didn’t even know California had mosquitoes.) The trees are amazing though.

We eventually make our way to Mendocino, where we check into our over-large room at the MacCallum House, a wonderful bed-and-breakfast. Our room is not a suite, but it is large enough for each kid to have his or her own twin bed, plus a private back porch that is very, very popular with the tot set.

Mendocino is the first place Darin and I went away to together for the weekend, 12 years ago. I didn’t remember it much. This is possibly because Darin and I didn’t see much of Mendocino then (wink, wink). There is an art festival going on in Mendocino while we’re there, but apparently there’s always some sort of festival going on there.

We have dinner at the MacCallum House restaurant, which would have been super-fabulous, except the kids finally drive both of us to the edge of our sanity and I do something I don’t know if I have ever done before: I break a promise to Sophia and we leave before she gets dessert, because she does not touch a thing on her plate after dessert is mentioned. I am especially upset because I really wanted some of that dessert, because the dinner was so fabulous.

Upside: Those trees! And boy, do we have to plan a trip to a forested area for these kids at some point.
Downside: Losing my temper with the kids.

Saturday

We make (and keep) a vow to do no driving whatsoever. We walk around Mendocino Village, which takes approximately six seconds, and that’s if you stroll. We have breakfast at the MacCallum House, since it’s included in the room price, and it’s as super-fabulous as the dinner was. We go for a walk on the headlands that overlook the ocean. Sophia, as always, is in front.

My family explores the Mendocino headlands

Back in town, Sophia slips and falls and skins her elbow, which leads to screaming, crying, and a search for Band-aids. Surprisingly, I put a box of Band-aids in the dobb kit before we set off, although I forgot the tube of Polysporin. Darin takes her back to the hotel room to fix her up, and Simon and I wander around town a little. Eventually we end up back at the room too, where we all laze around a little before setting out for lunch.

We stop at Tote Fete to pick up some sandwiches and then head back to the Magnificent Mendocino Coastline to spread a blanket and eat.

Sophia wants a picnic, Sophia gets a picnic

I even got out my notebook and started to sketch the coastline a little. This lasted approximately 3 seconds before Simon whipped my book out of my hands and started drawing. He drew so much in my book that it’s time to start a new book!

Soon I have to buy Simon his own damn Moleskine notebook—he hogged mine

We discover later on that all four of us got severely burned in the sun, which makes me crazy because usually I put sunscreen on the kids and just hadn’t this time! There’s nothing like seeing the flesh of your children roasted by the sun to make you feel guilty.

We walk around town, investigate the art fair, sit on the blanket under some trees. Eventually we drift back up the hill to our room and sack out—me surfing the Web, Darin and the kids trying to watch some TV without watching any ads. (Not that easy. Everywhere should have TiVo, dammit!)

Neither Darin nor I have the inclination to brave another restaurant scene with the kids. Plus, we have that gorgeous back porch attached to our hotel room. So we get yummy, yummy, Thai-spicy takeout from the Mendocino Cafe and eat al fresco in the chilly evening air. Then I go out to get us some dessert (yes! I want to try some of that MacCallum House restaurant dessert!).

We all pile into our beds fairly early.

Upside: God, Mendocino is a gorgeous, quiet little town.
Downside: The sunburn.

Sunday

Another yummy breakfast at the restaurant. I have the same damn thing: the wild blackberry corncakes.

We head out of town, surrounded by gorgeous scenery. We stop for lunch at Velasco’s in Petaluma, an extremely child-friendly Mexican restaurant that just hit the spot. Petaluma looks like an interesting mix of old California town and recent industrial spot, but we are too tired to even dig out the guide book and read about it. We just head straight home. The longest part of our trip is definitely crossing San Francisco. 19th Avenue has the worst traffic I’ve ever been in in the City.

Get home. I do errands like shopping for milk and bread and picking up our mail. Everyone else sacks out. We have a pretty low-key evening.

Upside: We’re home.
Downside: We’re home.