The Tipping Point

I don't recall when Meg suggested I take the boys camping while she was taking an extended weekend in Salt Lake, but at first I thought that was a silly idea--experiencing the rainy season out-of-doors with two young boys didn't seem like much fun. But when you go camping in a yurt, who cares what the weather is like outside?

Meg picked me up at the office after I worked half a day, and we all drove to PDX, dropping off Meg and Susan, who had driven down from Redmond, Washington, the night before. We then turned around and drove back the same way we came until arriving in Astoria--all in the rain. I've driven through Astoria a couple of times, but I've never stopped for long--it's a nice little town. We drove to the highest point in the city to the Astoria Column, hoping to climb to the top for an even better view, but it is closed while they build an entirely new staircase. But the panorama views of the city, the mountains, the river, and the ocean were amazing.

We arrived at Ft. Stevens around 2:00 p.m., dumped all our stuff of in Yurt #9, and set the rice cooker. The sun and dry clouds replaced the rain, so we ventured out for a few hours, hiking to the beach and the wreck of the Peter Iredale. We were the only ones on the beach, except for a yellow Hummer (reminded me of the Fratelli's racing on the beach (skip to about 4:15)--although that was at Cannon Beach). Edward walked all the way to the beach, but pleaded for and received a shoulder ride on the return trip (about 3-4 miles total hike). It was starting to get dark and cold by the time we returned to the yurt, but the suihanki was literally beeping the moment we unlocked the door to the yurt--umm, warm sticky rice. The boys soon changed clothes for their pajamas, and they watched me play stupid Super Nintendo games on my laptop before they fell asleep in the yurt's bunk bed. I stayed up for another hour or so, reading from Kafka on the Shore and writing an entry for the yurt's journal.

Aaron was worried that he wouldn't know when to wake up because we didn't open any of the "windows" in the yurt. I then pointed to the ceiling, which has a "sunroof" at its pinnacle--problem solved. So we all slept peacefully in till 8:00 a.m., although Edward did whine a couple times at night about who knows what. After downing multiple bowls of Lucky Charms for breakfast, we threw all of our stuff back in the van, cleaned up the yurt, and drove to the "fort" portion of Ft. Stevens, which was the only part of the continental United States that was attacked during World War II. Most of the fort has been torn down or has deteriorated, but I liked walking around the bunkers and batteries built into the hillsides (the boys, not so much, particularly Edward, who thought that Aaron's and my musings on our movie concepts for "The Lost Child"--a forthcoming venture--were real--that there was a real Beast from the East lurking around the fort, causing him to run away screaming uncontrollably at one point).

We made our final stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, which I hadn't been to since Meg was pregnant with Aaron. The boys were excited to pick their own ice cream and ate most of it without spilling too much on themselves or on the floor, but Aaron clearly preferred sampling the different cheeses, going back time-and-time again for more and more. At least he was working to keep Oregon's lumberjacks employed, with all the toothpicks he went through . . .

We then drove back to Capital City without incident and, unfortunately, any funny anecdotes or people-hating speeches.