Americanuck

I was lucky enough to have the Friday off before we took off on the trip and I sure needed it. Aside from the last minute running around including buying assorted clothes for the boys, toiletries and trip snacks there was also the dreaded trip to kitty jail camp for our furry kids. People, there is nothing longer than a 30 minute drive with a Siamese cat who knows they are going to the “V-E-T-S”. Trust me! I’m surprised I still have what’s left of my hearing.

It was going to be a full load in Tom’s car. Aside from his own fairly big suitcase he took up half of bagzilla.

Tom claims its because his sweatshirts take up so much space (pssh) but I say he’s worse than a girl with all the stuff he takes with (heh). The boys each had a bag of their own, in fact Sean’s had to sit between them in the backseat, no room left in the trunk.

We didn’t get too late a start out of the gate but we still ended up with about an hours wait to cross the border. Considering it was the start of spring break it was a fairly short wait.

It was pouring rain when we set out but once we made it out of the Seattle area the sun started to peek through, by the time we hit mid-Oregon it was sunshine all the way baby.

Not long into the trip I had already had to read the boys the riot act after they started to fight in the back seat of the car. I wasn’t looking forward to having them bicker the whole way there so I made it perfectly clear that if they expected to ever, ever leave the house again on any kind of vacation they had best re-think the whole elbowing/whining/yelling thing. After that not so empty threat there descended a temporary and much welcomed cease-fire with some assistance by iPod.

Because a lot of our trip was booked last minute we basically just chose Eugene as the stopping point a couple of days before we left. It just made more sense to get as far down in Oregon as possible to make sure we could make the resort on Sunday. Unlike Portland there isn’t much to choose from hotel-wise in Eugene but it was only one night. As long as the place was clean I was happy. We ended up booking at the Residence Inn there. It was a suite, so it worked out cheaper than two hotel rooms.

Tom didn’t have time to make his usual vacation spreadsheet (coughfreakcough) but had copied the directions on how to locate the hotel off the ‘5′. I was navigating [Side note: I get lost in a mall so that tells you how much good I am..] and was careful to read the directions to him exactly as they were on the paper. Needless to say we got lost.

Getting lost in Eugene is like entering some kind of weird looping parallel universe, we saw a lot of the same places over and over again. We eventually SAW the hotel while going the wrong direction, but couldn’t figure out how exactly to GET there from the main roads. Eventually we figured it out and took a slightly more back-way route and checked in.

We headed out once again minus Chris who opted to rest in the room to explore the city, figure out a place to have dinner that night and to locate a ROSS store. As it happens luck was on my side on both counts. We did find a ROSS (which only yielded two items but hey, it was a start) but even better we found an Outback Steakhouse! You have to understand, coming from Western Canada where we don’t HAVE these places I had a list of must-stops and Outback was definitely on that list.

We drove back to the hotel to get Chris and headed back out to have dinner. The food and service was meh at this particular location which was kind of a disappointment to be truthful.

Photo above and below by Tom

The boys, because they had smaller bags, took their luggage into the hotel room, Tom had packed and overnight back with what he needed to get him through the night/next day and I had also packed clothes for the next day along with the usual toiletries. What I neglected to add to my overnight case was PJs. I’m not big for sleeping in the raw at the best of times and sure as shit not at a strange hotel sooo we headed back out to the car before bedtime to raid Bagzilla and get me something to sleep in. Tom felt the need to document this auspicious occasion and I normally have umm better organization skills (read anal retentiveness)

We watched a bit of tube then decided to crash for the night. The plan was to head back out on the road early, as day two was going to be a lot more time spent in the car to make it all the way to Aptos (near Santa Cruz, Ca) and the resort that was waiting for us.