Around this time last year, I was out in Oregon on a family reunion.
It was my first time visiting the West Coast of the United States, so it was quite an experience.
We flew into Portland and spent a few days there at a hotel. It was a pretty sort of place tucked into a heavily wooded area and it had a courtyard with a pond - which was, for some reason, kind of a dark teal color (I suspect dye). There were a lot of really interesting plants around, most of which don't grow anywhere near Michigan, and I took lots of pictures.
While we were in Portland, we went to the zoo. It was nice, although we moved through it fairly quickly due to some time constraints. They had some sort of a dinosaur exhibit going on and a few of those spit at you, so several of us ended up wet. I took pictures of the elephants, since they had a great viewing area, and I took a picture of a zebra mosaic thing on the ground. We got lunch and then we were off to do other things. Later, we met up with my great aunt and my great uncle for dinner.
After a few days, we drove out to the coast, where we had rented a cabin several weeks in advance. All of us crashed there, instead of doing individual hotel rooms, as staying together is the tradition of our family reunions.
On the way out, we went hiking in a beautiful park and took loads of pictures of the lighthouse, the ocean, and of starfish. It was my first time seeing starfish, too, and I was thrilled that we had managed to find so many.
By the time we got to the cabin, most of us were tired and done being motivated. Unpacking was awful, as usual. Of course, that was less to do with the actual experience and more to do with the fact that unpacking and packing are not my cup of tea.
Then my cousins and I put on our coats and we headed out for a night time walk on the beach. That was a rather interesting experience, given the fact that it was freezing and we got sort of lost. (Note: Getting lost can be avoided in some cases if you happen to know what your cabin looks like from the back.) But we were by the ocean and, as far as I'm concerned, a log would have been a perfectly good place to sleep. We did find our way back that night, though, so we got to be warm, which was also nice.
Over the next few days, I was in a very cold sort of paradise. I am absolutely in love with the ocean and I'm not great friends with the sun (Sunburn, anyone?), so gray skies were fine by me. There were lots of great places to explore and I got to see tide pools for the first time, which was excellent. Also, in town, there were some wonderful little touristy shops and I visited most of those. (Side note: I love small coastal towns).
There was only one part of the vacation that I didn't love, and that was the fact that there were no bookstores on the coast in the area we were located. Sure, there was a small grocery store that sold books, but they didn't sell the sort of books that I was looking for - a few YA books and the second book in a series. I know that it's probably kind of weird to let something like that bother me, but I was really quite disappointed.
So, I filled up the time I would have spent at the bookstore with other things, such as hiking through the hills/mountains and taking long walks on the beach. At one point, I even decided get up at 6:00 AM to go whale watching with my family - not that we saw any, but that's beside the point.
Overall, I had a pretty great time even without a bookstore in the vicinity. But this experience definitely made me realize that I never want to move somewhere that doesn't have a bookstore within half an hour's driving distance, because I'm not certain that I could handle that without having a mental breakdown. (Addicted? Kind of. Yeah.)
However, we went back to Portland, OR for the last few days of our vacation. And, this time, we stayed in the city area. Which was pretty cool for me because I got to go to a bookstore, and it wasn't just any bookstore.
For those of you who don't know, there's a lovely little bookstore in Portland called Powell's City of Books. (Note: This place is not actually little. In fact, it's the largest bookstore in the United States of America). It's pretty much a warehouse. It has new and used books, including ARC copies, and I had some money to spend, so...
I left really happy.
The end.
PS: You can check out Powell's at the link below, and if you ever get the chance to go there, I recommend visiting. It's a pretty cool place:
http://www.powells.com/
