Weekenders: Oregon Coast Edition

May 06, 2015 candacemorris 0 Comments

Joel and I have long housed a prejudice against the state of Oregon. Not only did the expansive state make for an extremely long drive between Redding, California (where we attended college), and Seattle, Washington (where Joel lived), but Oregon has a reputation of being worst drivers with the worst speed limit AND you have to let someone pump your gas for you (read: talk to strangers!).


But truthfully, we've not seen very much of Oregon. Joel has lived in Seattle his whole life, so I am not sure what his excuse is, but I'd never seen the Oregon coast either.

So we did. We hitched up Bowie to Gma and Gpa (she was not upset) and took off for a very long drive in a very short weekend.

There's totally something about the Oregon Coast. It's not like California, where I grew up. But it's also not totally typical PNW like Washington Coast. I wasn't expecting the accessible tides, reflective sunsets, surfers, and nearly perfect weather.

Oregon was a backdrop, a lovely movie set to our weekend.

Segue:
We've made a way for parenting to be awesome. Basically, we still do what we want, but doing "whatever" we want no longer happens whenever we want.  It takes planning. But I'm a natural planner, so we've been pretty good about frequent dates, weekends away, and even longer vacations sans Bowie.

So it's not the getting away that I miss so much. It's the following our whimsy that we don't ever really get to do. On road trips, we don't just stop and enjoy lunch at a pub (sitting at a bar!) for an hour. Shopping trips are done solo or is planned during optimal toddler times of day, restaurants chosen accordingly. Going to movies? What's that?

With no plans at all, we stumbled into pubs for mid-day pints, wandered around stores, read books for hours, played with light and camera settings, and slept a lot. It was more restorative than I imagined it would be.





















It's just that time never feels leisurely anymore. Is this desire to recapture how time felt as a child, like you had a ton of it to kill, is that not something we can have as adults? Only if we plan it.


crm