The hotel had a little balcony that overlooked the river, which the girls LOVED. They also loved the

Since we moved to Idaho 6.5 years ago, we've kept saying that we would like to take a vacation to the Oregon coast. But our vacation time was usually spent visiting family, which is great, but since we have no family on the Oregon coast, we hadn't gotten around to that particular trip.
Our intended plans for this summer included traveling down to Long Beach to visit Dave and Anna sometime in late August. We kept waiting to firm up our plans because Jim's work was crazy all summer, and it was impossible to plan ahead because each day's work determined what would need to be done in subsequent days. Finally, the end of August came and we sadly had to cancel our trip altogether. We'd kept it in the back of our minds that if California didn't work out, maybe we could try a shorter trip to the Oregon coast. Well, two weeks ago on Tuesday, cheapest rental cars in ohio Jim said, "IF things cheapest rental cars in ohio go well tomorrow cheapest rental cars in ohio night, we can take off Thursday, cheapest rental cars in ohio Friday, and Monday to go to Oregon." So I got the go-ahead from Jim on Wednesday afternoon, and I planned and packed for the trip in about 24 hours.
Jim's parents generously offered to let us use Steve's hotel points for the trip, so I called him up and gave hims a few hotel options and our planned itinerary, and he reserved hotel rooms for us. Jim got home from his Underway at 5:30 Thursday morning, slept for a few hours, and we were on the road at 12:30pm!
We stayed the first night in Portland, and got up Friday morning and took the girls to the Oregon Zoo. The first night with the 5 of us in a hotel was ROUGH. Clementine had a bit of a cough and kept us up quite a bit of the night. Also, Grace didn't want to stay in her crib, so when Clementine wasn't keeping us up, Grace was. Lily slept great!
When Grace walked up to the glass, the orangutan came up and sat down and just stared deeply into her eyes. They were enamored with each other, and stayed like this for quite some time. Actually, a lot of the animals acted kind of different around Grace. I think she might be able to communicate subconsciously with them or something. :)
The hotel had a little balcony that overlooked the river, which the girls LOVED. They also loved the pools at the hotels. When I asked what Lily's favorite part of the trip was, she said swimming in the pool. Hmmm... we didn't have to drive 9 hours to swim in a pool... :)
Friday night, after arriving in Seaside, we headed to Cannon Beach to look for tide pools. We didn't know where to go, and our first try yielded only beach. But what a beach it was! We arrived at low tide (as per my design) cheapest rental cars in ohio and there was seriously about a quarter mile of sand sand sand before you got to the surf. SO MUCH BEACH! It was cool and windy, though, so we didn't plan on the girls playing in the water... but can you really keep kids out of water? Um, no!
Of course, you can't go and not get ice cream. cheapest rental cars in ohio Oh. My. Goodness. It was soooo good! I've had Tillamook ice cream before cheapest rental cars in ohio from the grocery store, but this was so fresh and creamy and at that perfect almost-soft-serve temperature. Delectable!
The gal at the hotel had told Jim to try the "salmon candy". That sounded pretty yucky to me, but lucky for us, it wasn't candy. It was just little pieces of (smoked?) salmon that were so good, they were like candy!
Our last night in Seaside, we went to the beach in Seaside, which was really fun. Seaside was a neat little town! Jim bought a couple of kites, which we flew on the beach. Somehow, that night was the least windy night of all, and the more elaborate kite he bought did not want to fly for us. But we had fun flying the toucan kite, and the girls got to swing on some swings that were right on the beach while we watched the sun set over the water.