Tuesday, September 26, 2006

In the Sky! It's a Bird, a Plane, No, It's a Tumor!


Partly in honor of Sergio's birthday and partly just because we wanted to, we drove to Astoria on Saturday by way of Seaside. These are places that are exactly as quaint as the names suggest. In fact we spent a good portion of our time in Astoria trying to decide if the sweet small town in Kindergarten Cop was the same place we were exploring. As luck would have it, Kindergarten Cop was on tv the next morning, and it most definitely is the exact town. Only the elementary school in the movie is really a community college. The more you know. Sergio and I have found that some of the best trips happen when we don't really plan them. Maybe it is the lack of expectations to be met. This was one of those days. First we stopped in Seaside and hung out on the beach looking for whole sand dollars and trying to trick Eliot in the water. The weather was gorgeous this time, though the water was still pretty cold. We played for a while before deciding to head into Astoria before we got too sandy to be in public. Astoria is more of a fishing village built on this big hill that makes driving a little scary. We drove around looking at houses before we found the Astoria Column which is a windy road that ends at the very top of Astoria and has a big tower you can climb up to check out the incredible view. But the best part was that you can buy these little wooden gliders to throw off the top of the tower. How fun is that! We walked the 164 winding stairs to the top and threw all five little planes off and watched them swirl to the ground. Except for the one Sergio threw that turned around and came crashing into strangers standing next to us. We got a free throw. Theoretically we could have done this over and over if we wanted to climb down and collect our planes and climb back up. Realistically, small children stood at the bottom of the tower and stole all of our planes. Later, while standing in a Safeway parking lot, I heard an odd barking noise and asked someone what it was. Seals. They hang out on a nearby dock. We took off to see these guys. Are any of you aware of how active these things are? And territorial. We watched for a long time and saw some severe fights over the sunny spots on the docks. We also got rather close to some and antagonized them with Eliot, who didn't seem to have a clue that these things were animals. They noticed him though. At least they did when I set him on the dock a few feet away from them to see if they would react. Then we went back to Seaside and played in the surf for a while. We found these horrible tiny creatures that swarm when the waves recede. There was some screaming. Like little girls. And not just by me. Sea life is creepy. We also tried digging for clams...didn't find any. And that was pretty much the whole day. Now settle in because we have lots and lots of
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1 comment:

Shelley said...

Eliot looks like a tasty snack in relation to the seals.

Now I'm going to have to watch Kindergarten Cop again to see the town. I don't remember much about the movie except the school.