Getting Things Done

Sergio and I have a list of items that we are trying to check off before we leave Portland in two weeks. TWO WEEKS! This list involves things like swim in Oneonta Gorge one more time, go to the coast again, eat pho, shop at the Saturday Market, and so on and so forth. This is our WANT TO DO list. It has very little to do with our NEED TO DO list, which involves things like sell our stuff, donate our stuff, throw away our stuff, clean, turn utilities on or off, change our address, figure out our new address, and so on and so forth. In fact, that NEED list is being avoided with all of our combined might.

Last weekend we marked one thing off of the WANTS, though. We drove out to the coast on Sunday and walked around the cute town portion of Cannon Beach. We explored all the funky sea life attached to Haystack Rock (if you blow on the seemingly inanimate objects it turns out they will either move or spit). We had lunch at a brew pub next to a fire place (because it is still cold and windy on the coast). After that we bought a small kite at a kite store and drove further up the coast. We got out at a little space in the trees that had a hiking trail down to a secluded surfer's beach and we hiked. Along the way we stopped to marvel at the enormous slugs (a practice that just never gets old), and at one point came face to face with a little black and white snake. We were less fond of this. A little further down the path we saw another of the same sort of snake in the path, but not until we were quite close. Sergio, the snake, and I all jumped about a foot, but Eliot never noticed a thing. He's an awesome guard dog. As soon as we got to the beach we realized it was anything but secluded and turned right around. We stopped a little further up the road at a quiet wind-surfers beach called Manzanita. It was here that we let Eliot off of his leash, set up the kite, attached it to the dogs harness and let him fly the kite all day long. Yes, it is so very easy to fly a kite on the windy beaches of Oregon that a mini poodle can do it. Everyone should try this sometime. Eliot spent about an hour fetching a huge stick out of the water while pulling a kite. He slept well that night.

It was a lovely day and certainly something we will miss about this part of the country.