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At the Sleepy Monk Coffee shop in Cannon Beach.
The second weekend in September Grace was finishing up her leave from base. She had spent some time in Seattle with Mariam, and mom had flown out to Seattle again to visit Grace as well. Lucky for me, I had enough airline miles to get a ticket to fly out to the west coast for a brief four day weekend with my mom and sisters. We knew that there was a good chance that this would be the last time all four of us could be together before grace deploys, so it was important for me to be able to join them.
I flew out on a thursday night after work, and arrived to Portland OR around 11:00pm. Mariam and Grace picked me up from the airport and we drove the last couple of hours to the coast. I was almost deliriously tired by the time we got there, but it was such a terrific ride! We drove along a winding, two lane highway, with massive pine trees lining each side of the road. And if you looked up to the sky above the trees, all you could see was an amazing blanket of stars in the dark night. The sort of thing I crave and miss sometimes while living in the city.
We kept the weekend pretty leisurely. We got up on Friday, not too early, and had coffee and a bite to eat for breakfast from a coffee shop near our hotel room, and then took a walk along the beach and into the town.
Mmmm, espresso. (Eda - I think you would like it here!)
The Wayfarer.
Mom, Grace and Mariam walking along the mist covered beach in the morning.
Grace acting like a dork of course!
The mist was very heavy, but cleared up later in the afternoon.
Around the tidal pool.
Around the tidal pool.
There were all sorts of birds around Haystack Rock, and then around the rocks in the tidal pool there were all sorts of living creatures, including these sea urchins (I think that's what they were - if you are reading this and know that they are something else, let me know!).
Mariam and Grace examining a "severed finger", that actually turned out to be something more innocuous and ocean related....
Later in the evening we returned to the beach to build a bonfire and roast marshmallows. It was something Mar and I had talked about on our first visit to Cannon Beach back in July. We stocked up at the store on goodies to eat (and drink!) and got a bundle of wood and some fire starters (seriously a good thing we got this!).
It took some time to get the fire going, mainly on account of the wind...and it came down to us tearing up the cardboard graham cracker box to keep the flame long enough for lighting the fire starter. But we got it going and it was terrific!
Grace innocently enjoying her delicious s'more, meanwhile in the background....
An eager seagull, who we had nicknamed pickles earlier in the day, was lurking - waiting for Grace to spare a morsel of s'more...
I think pickles eventually gave up on us giving him any food...and eventually left us alone.
It was a perfect evening. The beach was cool, chilly and damp, but the fire was warm and the company was awesome. We're lucky to have had such a terrific time to hang out together.
Saturday we walked around the small city a bit more, stopping in some of the stores that we had missed the day before, and then we packed up and headed out to return to Seattle. On the way back we hit up every antique store and thrift store we came across, and I do mean EVERY one of them!
This was one of the cooler ones.
And then of course, given that blackberries are ALL OVER the place in Oregon and Washington, I was really wanting to stop for pie. Mariam remembered a great roadside diner/rest stop and so we pulled in there and all of us ordered some pie.
We made it back to Seattle in the late evening, and ordered chinese food for dinner and just spent the night goofing around Mariam's apartment. It was so nice to have that weekend time with my mom and sisters. We were all sad that Mom and I had to leave the next day (mom in the morning, me in the afternoon), but we had so much fun that we said we would have to make Cannon Beach happen more regularly.
