A (crazy) weekend at the beach!

Saturday morning at 9:30, we set out towards Lincoln City with plans of a grand Oregon Coast tour. Plans were to pick Skyler up from his dad's and hit the beach by noon. By the time we fell in love with Tyson's new puppy, had to stop 3 times for potty and forgotten item emergencies, and sat in holiday weekend beach traffic, we pulled in to Lincoln City by 2 or so.

After going out for a meal that reminded my why I don't like to eat out anymore (in a nutshell, I could make way better food and not pay for someone else's overpriced ****), we came out of the restaurant to find our tire flat. We figured it was a fluke, aired the tire up and headed for the outlet malls.

Did you know that the Saturday before school starts is the busiest day at the outlet mall, according to the employees? Huh. I didn't know that. One look at the place clued us in, though. After shopping as fast as humanly possible, we were all happy. Skyler got a really cool watch (he's been saving for one for a long time), Alex got a hat he adores, Dusty got some work clothes, and I got a good bottle of wine. Personally, I think I am the lucky one. :-) On the way out of the outlet mall, we saw a man on a really cool Harley Davidson just pulling in to the spot. When we apologized to him for the fact that Alex was staring at/stalking him, he offered to let Alex on the bike. Pretty much, Alex was in heaven. He got to sit on a "real motocycy" AND honk the horn!

Next up was our hotel. We were so excited to see that our $100 on a holiday weekend room was right across the ocean with an ocean view! We were a little less excited when we got in to the room and realized that $99 of that rate paid for the view, and roughly $1 of it paid for the atmosphere. Ah, well. It was inexpensive and still a treat. Luckily we got out of the room immediately to go play on the beach. I say luckily because after 15 minutes of beach play, the sky got dark, the wind picked up, and a storm quickly made itself known! At least we got our sand time! The boys were thrilled until Alex took a face plant in a stream right as the storm was really getting cold.

After dinner at a place that was super gluten free friendly but incredibly overpriced and tasteless, we were ready to go to bed. And that's when we walked out to find our tire flat. Again. Again, we aired it up, discovered a screw had recently declared our tire it's home, then looked up every tire shop around only to realize that they'd be closed through Monday due to the weekend and holiday. Dusty asked a gas station attendant where we'd get a tire fixed on a Sunday, and he responded with a hearty laugh before telling us "east".

This morning Dusty woke up and played SuperHusband by putting the spare tire on. This changed our plan, though, since we couldn't really drive too far on it. So rather than breakfast and sightseeing in Depot Bay before heading up to Seaside...we grabbed coffee by the hotel and drove up to the Tillamook Chesse Factory, after breaking the news to the kids that the Seaside arcade would have to wait. On the way to Tillamook, we decided to take a detour and show the kids Pacific City. The weather was stormy and we wanted to show them the beauty of the huge waves hitting the cliffs. Sounds great, right?

At Pacific City, you can drive your car on to the beach. Note: don't try this in a Civic on really wet sand. Not only did the car get stuck- it got stuck so close to the water that a wave broke really close, sending water rushing under the entire car and sinking our little hybrid even deeper. After frantically trying to dig, push and drive the car out, a guy with an SUV towed us out. Aside from some embarrassment and hurt pride, it turned out ok.

The cheese factory was great, though by the time we got there Dusty and I could have been happy fast forwarding to bedtime. Why does Tillamook Ice Cream taste so much better at the factory? It is just fabulous. Almost made up for the face that we almost lost our new car to the Pacific.

All in all, it was a good trip. Although we feel like perhaps we have had better luck on other vacations! We are looking forward to clam chowder and oysters in the next few days after stopping by a local seafood company.

And that's all, folks! Now if we can only get the tire fixed...