Vacation without the dogs.

Now as a norm I always load the kids and dogs in the van and off we go on 99.44% of all vacations and trips. It is what it is. Now we always do thing that we can with a van load of dogs in tow, mostly that mean the dog have to stay in the van. We have a second set of keys that is always glued around someone’s neck so there is no worry about locking said dogs in the van and not being able to get back in. Yes it has happened but that is another story.  The spare key gets use almost as much as the main key. Now the kids are mostly gone and there is just one living at home, and a dog transport gets cancelled so we decided to take a vacation with just the two of us and no dogs. The place that I have always wanted to see since the movie Goonies is the beach from the end of the moving. It had a wild, adventurous and mysterious effect on me that has stayed with me since I saw the movie 30 years ago. So my first thought is lets go to Oregon.  I did not know the whole coast is this way I thought it was just in one place. So to plan the trip to maximize the time to see as much as possible, the beach was not the first thing to see as soon as we left the plane.  Now I am very short on patience and hate to wait for anything. I had just enough time after landing and getting to the beach to make myself, a crazy driven woman, who will get there and get picture and nothing, will stop me.

The trip started with the Columbia River Gorge and then  we worked our way back to the coast. So one and half days later just 1 hour before dark we reach the Hay stack rock. As soon as I get on the beach I realized that is not the beach I saw in the movie but the rock was. It is raining like hell and I am enjoying the beach but bothered by the fact that there is another beach with a view of Hay stack and  I am not on that beach. We were leaving early in the morning to stay on track with the itinerary I have worked up to maximize our quantity of what Oregon has to offer. I just had to give it one more shot to find the beach. I seen something when we entered the Cannon Beach community that showed a state park to the North of the city and I had to go there to see if this was the beach I have stuck in my head. Now only a driven crazed women would do this in the middle of a rain storm and before sun up. So off we go, the wind is driving the rain sideways and the rain drops are a big as soft balls. One drop and your drenched, no dodging these big water bucket drops. We get to the car and proceed back to the area that showed us the state park, wet as hell. Now it took us twenty minutes to get through the park and out to the place called Indian beach.  It is a up and down the mountain and the curves at each plateau is so sharp you have to slow it down to 3mph, narrow for one car and trees are part of the shoulder on each side. We make it out to the beach right at the time of sunrise. The rain and fog do make the light of day impenetrable.  The ranger is there so this sets me to worry as I did not purchase a day pass so I was there illegally, I could not force myself to spend the money to get rained on  and then leave. I decided to wait a bit to see if the rain would ease up enough so I could at least see if this was in fact the beach. I watched the ranger to see if I would get busted or not but realize the ranger had no plan on getting wet either.  10 or 15 minutes later the rain eases just enough for the ranger to grab the garbage and drive away and for me to see we are at the beach of my dreams. Now I should have left then but I had to have a picture. So we sat another 10 minutes and it did ease and I  said "lets do it " and we rolled up our pants and jumped out of the car and ran down the cliff side path to the beach. I took my camera and an umbrella my daughter took her phone and an umbrella, not sure what the hell we were thinking in 40 mile hour winds. We are like to kids running down the beach umbrellas inverted and drenched laughing and snapping pictures climbing on rocks and just have a great time. My daughter yells "Ma you left the lights on the car". I looked but with out glasses I don't see much so I just see head lights on the top of the cliff. No, I did not. Must be some other person hoping to catch a little view of the beach.  I then can see the head lights move away.   We started make our way back when I see a big van pull in and park down from us.  I have watch every crime drama ever made  and I am going to arm myself with a rock in the pocket of the jacket just in case there is some foul play at work. A few more steps and I decide I need another rock, one can never have enough rocks if things get ugly. We get to the cliff path and start our way up when a man sticks his head over the side and yells down at us" Hey is this your blue car up here?" Ya "Well the window is smashed in" he says. What the hell and we take off. Yes the side window was smashed and they got our purses, the boyfriends nice camera that my daughter did not want to ruin by getting it wet.  They got a host of other things in side the purses. At that point the mans wife appears from inside the van and we started the 911 call. As we all discuss all the events leading up to this point I realize I still have a rock in my hand and feel like a fool just dropping it in font of the guy so I just hold the damn thing. The police show up and I am on the phone with one of my banks and they are talking with the guy and his wife and then he comes to us and says "do you have any ID"? No the bad guys have it. Then he says "do you have anything with your picture on it"? No but you can see me in pictures on the camera. Then my daughter pipes up "Ma, Ma will this work" and she pulls out my old drivers licenses that I had replaced two years earlier. What the hell, you have been carrying that damn thing for two years. Ya, Ma my friends tease me about it. That stupid license was my salvation for the rest of the trip. Who knew that a stupid argument two years earlier that ended in, what ever, would save my bacon on a vacation 2 years later and 2000 miles from home. 
Two hours later as we are getting in our car and leaving the beach I dropped the damn rock only to find the other one when we stopped for potty break. The front seat was full of glass and it is still raining like hell so we shut a towel in the door to keep the rain from drenching the car and us but my daughter has to sit in the back and hold the corner of the thing so it does not smack the shit out of me while driving.  Now she is balancing herself on the edge of the back seat holding the corner of the wet towel in one hand and the phone with GPS in the other and she says " Ma if we would have taken the dogs we would have never been robbed."