Things To Do On Your Spring Break Vacation

Take your two daughters, ages twenty-four and ten and
your granddaughter, age four, on a girl trip.

Drive six hours to Seattle, get stuck in traffic for fifteen minutes while a parade goes by, find your hotel downtown after taking four wrong turns, re-routed by GPS (Global Tracking System).

Walk on the pier thinking “Pike Place has got to be here somewhere!” not realizing you had walked right past it. It begins to rain and everyone now has to pee, laugh a little – or you may cry. Stop to take photos of the kids holding the Space Needle in their hands. You see a statue of a naked man, try not to pee your pants laughing as you hold something else in your hands for a more adult photo. Walk five more blocks and up five flights of stairs and finally find Pike Place. Try to remember why you wanted to bring two small children to this place.

Return to fabulous hotel and walk to Irish restaurant T.S. McHugh’s and think, “How strange that people are wearing green t-shirts with Irish slogans!” Drink a Guinness beer and eat soda bread. Yum.

Go to the zoo in the morning passing runners with numbers pinned to their shirts. Runners in green and black striped long socks, green top hats and tails, green fuzzy big hair and giant glasses. Pass a sign that says its Irish Festival Weekend and think, “Ah, Ha.” See the zoo in speedy like fashion, taking photos of your daughter holding a Gorilla in her hand.

Drive three hours from Seattle to the cabin that you’ve rented by the ocean and pass through a town that looks like it has been destroyed. A town you later Google, nicknamed in the past as the “Hellhole of the Pacific” for its high murder rate. Try not to scream. Houses boarded up, with shingles missing and “For Sale” signs on each street, businesses with signs declaring empty, and see very few people. Blanch at the Tsunami warning signs that are posted every mile. Drive another thirty minutes along a sketchy road seeing the same scary looking houses that you think no one could live in, passing the occasional new gated beach home, between the thickest forest that you’ve ever seen as you think, “This is where murderers must hide their victims.” Get to the cabin and beach community as your GPS locator finally catches up with you because you now have service. Giant sigh of relief, thank God for GPS.

Eat out for lunch; you deserve it after that drive.

Walk the path to the beach and put your feet in the cold, freezing water as it travels to your heart and think, “Am I dying?”

Watch your two daughters and granddaughter play the “Hot Lava” game against the waves rolling in and capture their smiling faces on film. This photo alone is worth the trip.

Eat out for dinner, even though you brought a cooler full of food, again, you deserve it after that drive and the Café waiter and cook are the only other inhabitants of this area so it makes you feel less scared.

Stay for two days, hot tub in the back of the cabin and think about the cougars and bears that the cabin manual said to beware of and think, “Oh My God.” Don’t tell your daughter that you heard voices in the night and that you are a little freaked out that we don’t have cell service.

Eagerly drive home via Portland, stop and visit your daughter’s school friend. At Mother’s Bistro eat some of the best food, sample everyone else’s dishes. Eat a decadent dessert because it’s a twelve hour drive and you may as well as you think, “Who am I trying to impress?”

Stop at Multnomah Falls on the way home to see the big waterfall. Take photos of your ten year-old holding the bridge in her hand in front of what looks like a film crew. Realize that they ARE filming some guy on the bridge and that it is Nick Cannon from America’s Got Talent – whom your ten year-old LOVES. Get photo of her with him – wait until we get to the car to see her flip out.

Drive the rest of the way home feeling very giddy, wrestle tumbleweeds at the rest stop, take photos of birds, giant windmills, watch an episode of iCarly – the kids show on the iPhone and once again, thank God for GPS.