The Oregon Coast in June
Yet another road trip began with the forgetting of an important item five minutes into the trip. My dad’s girlfriend swung the car around, and my dad ran back into the house to fetch his forgotten phone. In preparing two cars and eight people for travel, it’s easy to lose track of those tiny things, such as the tiny machine that serves as your lifeline. In my dad’s case, a brand-new one.
After the necessary gas station snack run, we drove two and a half hours to Edgefield, Oregon, our first stop. Well, our first stop was actually a restaurant, Sugarpine Drive-in. My stepsister Rosie groaned at the hippie menu our parents had picked, packed with salads and soups and sandwiches and sauerkraut. I had a fancy salad and a bite of honeycomb from an ice cream sundae my stepmom ordered. All five kids—now featuring a sixth member, my stepsister Marcy’s girlfriend—took a picture in front of a mural that said “You are so gorge.”
We then walked down to the aforementioned gorge, and sank into the sand beneath a cloud-thick sky, lovingly making fun of each other for everything. My brother wandered off and swung a stick around like it was a lightsaber. Marcy scaled the first rocky surface she could find. My dad fumbled while standing ankle-deep in the icy river trying to snap a beautiful photo, and dropped his brand new iPhone in the water. It survived, so we were able to laugh hysterically at the time two years ago when he tried to take a video, on a paddleboard, of himself doing a headstand, on a paddleboard, and his phone was thus lost forever to entertain the fishes and seaslugs at the bottom of the Puget Sound. He is prone—or rather, susceptible by nature—to accidents of this manner.
Edgefield was lovely and filled with Pacific Northwest charm, but we were there for a specific hotel: McMenamin’s, where the bathrooms were shared, the walls were covered with vintage murals of cherub-faced clouds and medieval cats, and we had to sneak an eight person family into two queen bedrooms. We succeeded. We were only there for one night; but a wonderful night it proved to be, spent in the beautiful, river-shaped soaking pool lined with flickering torches. A book in one hand and hot tea in the other, I was successful in not dropping anything in the water. My dad played it safe, and took all his instagram story videos on the edge of the pool. Dinner was eaten on the tree-shaded balcony, and then we strolled into the movie theater on the property where we saw the newest Steven Spielberg. It was raining when we left, so the two-minute walk through the lush green grounds to the hotel was shortened as we ran between lulling garden-lights, sweaters pulled over our heads.
Though our trip to Oregon was planned around sunny summer weather and beach days, the onslaught of rainy, clouded weather did not bother me. It made the magic around Edgefield come alive. The sound of rain outside our opened window as I slept on the floor, the deep, quiet wooden halls with river-shaped carpets and antique lamps, doors painted over. This place had been a farm in the 20th century, where people could come to stay and be fed, and earn a living. The grounds around the place, therefore, were vast and carefully tended to—grapevines outside the parking lot, a water tower above the outdoor restaurant, a flower garden we wandered through the next morning that led us to an open-air glassblowing studio. We sheltered from the late-morning drizzle as we watched two of the artists carefully and strategically procure an olive oil cruet from molten glass.
Next stop was Portland, though we pulled aside for lunch at an Oregon food truck lot, of which I’ve discovered there are plenty. Despite the gentle heat, we chose to walk twenty-five minutes to a space-themed arcade, and a Powell’s Books location. The bookstore was something I could find myself lost in—I wandered the shelves, looking for copies of books I had on my list. I settled after numerous difficult decisions on a nonfiction book about moss, my challenge for the summer, and a children’s classic I’d been meaning to read. By that time, the entire rest of my family had moved to a thrift store next door.
The hottest part of the day, the long walk back to the car, the taking-too-long in various stores and the confusion of parking in downtown Portland meant we reached the stage of our trip where everyone was annoyed at everyone. But we made it to the hotel, where bunk beds were divvyed out and we took time to rest and regain our spirits. This was effective; very soon, the quiet anger transformed, between siblings, to cautious laughter. Dinner was had downstairs during happy hour, board games were played, and sparse rest was caught packed beneath and between snoring sleepers.
In the morning, we made our way to an outdoor market beneath a bridge. The rest of my spending money was, however, spent on a final third book at the original Powell’s location—an unavoidable stop, every time I am in Portland. It might be heaven on earth for book lovers. It’s the largest independent bookstore in the world. Multiple sprawling, cozy industrial floors packed to the brim with every book you could possibly imagine. It’s no wonder that my stepsister Marcy went MIA for an hour in there, while the rest of us groaned at her to answer her phone—in her purse, of course—so we could get on the road.
We eventually made it to our third road trip stop, Pacific City, which was directly on the ocean. Through some shrubs behind the house we’d rented, and up a salt-soaked boardwalk, was the silver spread of water, the Oregon coast rising in wonderful formations of rocky beauty. We perched on the sand and watched the sun sink low. We filmed silly videos falling down sandy hills and laughed with each other.
The days we spent here were loud and slow, a perfect respite. The house was big enough that everyone got their own bed, which is a miracle and possibly a first in this family. We mostly rested, but when we weren’t doing that we biked and walked around the tiny town, all constructed of dark gray-brown wood that seemed perpetually wet. The local coffee shop was strung with nets and buoys for decoration. We played board games on the porch and argued over which movies to watch. We went to the grocery store, and Ben pushed Rosie around in a shopping cart shaped like a pink racing car. We walked down the beach, to a huge sand dune.
I don’t know if I can express how much I love the ocean in words, at least not fittingly. When we arrived at the place where the waves met the cliffs, the place where the water had long-since formed arches and divots in the sandy rocks, I perched on a boulder and watched. Waves are hypnotizing, crashing, roaring, dancing things, surging into the spaces between rocks, gently rolling back out again. Over and over, but each time is different. Sometimes they leapt up and glittered at my feet. I had Fleet Foxes’s Montezuma in my earbuds. The rest of my family walked along the sand dunes, but I did not. I sat and stared until the album was done.
I think I could spend the rest of my life watching the ocean waves and still be happy. Hopefully in another life, I became a lighthouse keeper.
Another day, we bought boogie-boards and got in the waves. This was a particular challenge, seeing as it was sixty-five degrees out, overcast, and the water was freezing. But the moment you were immersed, you felt alive. The waves lulled you and then tossed you nearly to the ground. The cold sparked in your body like electricity. The water rushed under you like a bull and spat you out on the sand. It was exhilarating, even though we could only spend about twenty minutes total in the water if we didn’t want to get hypothermia.
The most magical thing, I discovered, about the waves is what is revealed beneath them when they are pulled back. We got up early on the final morning to sift through tide pools at the edge of the sand dune. It was a trove of life-treasure; barnacles and mussels formed spiky skin on the underside of the boulders I’d leapt across yesterday. Crabs scuttled behind dark clams and crouched in crevices, hiding from the seagulls who swooped overhead. Blue and green anemones colored the water like vibrant sea-flowers. Starfish spread like orange and purple blossoms. We found heavy sand-colored hermit crabs. You had to really search to see them, but sometimes all it took was not looking for something that allowed the magic to appear.
The coastal trip was rainier than most of my family desired, but it was, for all it was worth, truly magical. Deer ran across streets and through whispering sandy-grass, everything made lush and wild from the rain. I spent most of my days curled inside, where there was a fireplace and plenty of books to read. It was everything I wanted from a Pacific Northwest coastal trip. The weather shifts, yes, and we drop things in the freezing waves, and get lost in bookstores, but all that is beautiful in life is reliant on change and unexpectedness. My family has found a way to turn the unfortunate mishaps into deliciously funny stories, and the rainy weather into wonderful adventures. I won’t complain, however, that no one dropped a phone in the ocean this time.
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