Day 38: Promenade

 After a few midnight feedings, I got Ida to sleep in the camp chair and managed to escape our stuffy hotel room at 6 AM and ride the Seaside Prom by myself. I rode all the way north to the end, then all the way south to the other end, then back to my hotel room. It made for a lovely morning.

Shadow selfie attempt.

I visited the Lewis and Clark salt cairn. So apparently the story is: Seaside is considered technically the end of the Lewis and Clark trail because Lewis and Clark, ensconced in their fort at the mouth of the Columbia river, had run out of salt, and sent some men to find seawater that was undiluted by the Columbia. They set up camp at a Native American village in today's Seaside and boiled seawater 24/7 for months. (You can read the plaque, too!). Anyway, it's fascinating that this is not the original cairn-- it's a replica built more than 100 years ago, so it was built closer in time to Lewis and Clark than today so it's super old.

Back at the hotel room, everyone was asleep. Like, for disturbing amounts. Finally, at 9:30 I tried to wake everyone up. We had our hotel continental breakfast and then Sabrina, Betty, and I went to the hotel pool while Jen, Edgar, and Ida packed everything up. Ida helped a lot.

I don't have any pictures from here on out. Sorry.

Finally, we came back from the pool and hauled all the heavy boxes and bikes back down the stairs and onto the car.

We made a last-minute decision to cut our Seaside visit short by a few hours so Edgar and Sabrina could go to their weekly Dungeons and Dragons thing. We stopped for cotton candy first. Baby was squalling, so we didn't get fast food until the Dairy Queen halfway home. We had to make that trip short because we were on a timetable, but at the last minute, Ida blew out her diaper and outfit, so we used our professional parenting skills and changed her out on the hood of the car.

Portland traffic was awful, so the kids were half an hour late to D&D but grateful they got to go. We dropped Ida off with grandma, so Jen, Betty, and I could quickly unload the car. We did, and when I picked Edgar, Sabrina, and Ida back up, it was all over but the shouting.

I fell asleep in my chair with Ida and missed most of the evening (including dinner), and crawled directly into bed.