Birthday trip

I wanted to drive. If you follow my blog, you know that I just bought a new 2022 Honda Insight. It is a delight to drive. It's a hybrid sedan that can get up to 55mpg. That seems like an unreal estimate to be honest, as even when I was driving this road trip, the best I could get was 47-50mpg for highway miles. But even so, it's just so much fun with all the technology it packs in. 

My commute is so short that I don't get to drive it enough for my liking so as a birthday treat I wanted to go on a road trip somewhere. I took Monday 4/25 and Tuesday 4/26 off. I had to wait until Sunday night on April 24th to see what the weather was going to be like on Monday since the forecast suggested isolated showers. My options were:

The coast (Long Beach/Cannon Beach)

Chuckanut drive by Bellingham 

Diablo Lake in the Northern Cascades

I've only been to Long Beach/Cannon Beach but none of those other places so I would have been happy doing any of them. The weather forecast suggested that the coast was going to be clear by midday so that's where we decided to go. 

We stopped at Long Beach and decided to walk the boardwalk. I hadn't been at Long Beach in so long that I had no idea the Gray Whale Skeleton was gone and they had replaced it with a Gray Whale wood sculpture. Apparently the skeleton had either been stolen or vandalized way back in the early 2000's so they had to replace it. Sad!

The weather was nearly perfect. The wind wasn't too cold and the temperature was pretty mild. The sun was out so it felt really nice. After we walked the boardwalk we went to Marsh's Museum - the prerequisite stop on every Long Beach trip. We then walked downtown until the clouds began to gather and it got too cold. We stopped at a bakery and got a number of delicious goodies to eat on the trip.

I then tried to drive on the beach. I'm not sure if my car just wasn't powerful enough or what, but it felt as if I was sinking and sliding too much. I switched it to Power mode and that helped, but I still didn't feel very confident that I wouldn't get stuck so I quickly turned around and headed back out.

After that, I decided to drive us down to Cannon Beach in Oregon. It was raining pretty heavily when we passed through Seaside and landed in Cannon Beach. We decided lunch was in order, and Patrick found a restaurant close by. Unfortunately, it was a really expensive menu so we decided to back out and find another place. I'm usually up for sandwiches so I found a deli. It was not good. And it wasn't cheap, either. Super disappointment. But, by the time we finished eating and parked at the public lot for Haystack, the weather was clearing up and the skies were parting. The weather was gorgeously perfect for beach walking and picture taking.

Once we were done taking pictures of the rock it was time to head home. We had a long drive ahead of us. It was a total of 365 miles round trip, which was technically less than a tank of gas, but I'd had to stop at Costco in Warrenton to make sure I had enough to get home because I hadn't been on a full tank when I left. (Does anyone find it disconcerting that Oregon pays people to pump your gas for you? Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but because I can't run my own card I have to tell him my PIN number?? Seems very... stealy.)

Anyway, that's my trip! A lot of fun and good pics too.