Which should have been extremely simple but I managed to make it quite a bit more complicated. In fairness – I had help. Not in getting out of Longview, I can follow directions, at least as far as managing to make a latte and petrol stop. (and no, I didn’t manage to snag one of the new Washington thermoses from Starbucks. It isn’t a great loss).
We crossed the Columbia on the Lewis and Clark Bridge. There are no photos as I don’t take pictures while driving….Then, coming off the bridge I just followed the signs toward Hwy 30. Astoria (on the Oregon side of the river) is clearly on the sign. Meanwhile my GPS is nagging me to follow the route. Riiiggghht. Ignoring him. I just kept on driving. Doug had warned me that this was a two lane highway. No problems, I grew up with two lane highways. I well understand that some people putter along and others take the narrow road, hill, valleys, and winding curves as a speeding challenge. There weren’t any slow moving heavy trucks or farm vehicles but I was glad to be able to move into the right lane on a couple of uphill stretches just to get rid of the speeding idiot on my bumper.
The fun actually began in Astoria. We stopped at the Safeway. I was leaving as George decided to come in and he passed me the keys. I headed back out to the car and started hunting for the box of cookies that I knew was in the back seat.. This truck roars up besides me. I quickly jumped back, shut the door and slid around the side of the car. Truck stops, then backs up across the lane and into a parking space. I turn around. Car is locked. In my haste to get out of the way, I had dropped the keys on the back seat. The stupid door locks automatically engaged. Note, normally I automatically put the keys in my pocket. Not thins time.
I do not care for the “new improved security” that most of the car manufactures seem to think we need. We do have AAA. George managed to reach them. About 30 minutes later, this dude in a small white van drove up, looked at the car. Then he pulled out a couple of small inflatable balloon things and a long wire gadget. The balloon things slid in along the top and back side of the front passenger window and moved the window just far enough for him to slid in the long wire hook. A short bit of fishing for the door handle and – there we were, open door. I grabbed the keys hit the unlock button to release everything and we were on our way.
At this point, I wasn’t up for the Maritime Museum. Instead we headed out of town and took Hwy 101 South to Canon Beach. The hotel wasn’t that hard to find. Even better, our room was one of those ready early. All of this was good because this was still Friday and I was glad to let George finish his conference call in the quiet of the room. Not in the car on Blue Tooth over the car speaker system.
Why Canon Beach? AcornsAndThreads, a lovely cross stitch store in Portland has a couple of retreats a year. Mostly in Portland and featuring workshops, guest designers. Since the start of the pandemic, first they moved to Zoom, and except for this one, have maintained a hybrid option (in person & zoom). Since this particular one is fewer people and is just a get together in a nice place, no Zoom. This is the same store than has been holding 1-2 x a month Tuesday night Zoom chats.
Anyway – there looks to be about participants. I found a relatively quiet table off to the side and had a few hours of chatting and stitching…
