So Oregon Coast has been on my bucketlist for quite some time. The ocean, being outside in nature, a fun long road trip...what could be better? Thanks to actually getting a tax return this year instead of paying taxes like last year, we decided that some of our return would be to memory making.
Let me preface this trip with the fact that our little Murray family has never been on a road trip longer than 5 hours away. But I was excited to make memories and see if we could fit all of our stuff in our mini van and make it all the way there with 4 little kids!
Day 1 we got to Reno. Let's just say the hotel I booked was in a sketch-ier part of town, especially so at 2 am in the morning when we arrived. But we got some sleep and were on the road again by 9 am. I thought we would be to the Redwoods by 4 or 5 pm.
About an hour and half into that day, we stopped in Susanville, CA to use the bathroom. Our kids were dying to run around so we found a cute little park and some fun friends!
A couple hours later, we found out that Blaine and I lovingly passed on the car-sick gene to each of our kids. Mountain after mountain pass caused each of our 4 little kids, and Blaine and I, to lose our lunches on the side of the road (if we could pull off) or use what we could find as a barf bag. It seemed like every 20 minutes we were stopping for someone to be sick. Eliza quietly threw up and fell asleep. It wasn't until one of our older kids pointed out that they saw something on her jammies that we knew she was sick too. By the time we realized each kid was sick, we gave them Dramamine, but to no avail. It came right up ten minutes later.
What should have taken us 7 hours took us 13. This sounds awful, but I learned a super important lesson. Prayer works. I started praying for the mountain roads to end, but since that was a little out of my control, I started praying for the mountain roads to feel more like flat roads. And it was at that point my kids stopped throwing up.
I also learned that a positive attitude changes everything. Hyrum, right after throwing up, said, "This is the best trip ever!" His enthusiasm was contagious. We started looking for blessings and being positive and I would say the time passed quickly, but it didn't feel too dreary.
At 10:30 pm we pulled into what we thought would be a great spot for the night...a little cabin in Elk Prairie State Park. After Blaine went and unlocked the cabins, he found out that there were no mattresses on the beds and that the heater didn't work. Yikes! Now it was my time to feel a little discouraged. I was 0 for 2 in booking places to sleep online :)
We didn't have enough warm clothes to stay with the heater not working...it was in the upper 40's. So we headed out not knowing where we should sleep for the night. We tried to stay in Klamath, but there were no openings.
Imagine how relieved we were when we pulled into this cute little town called Crescent City around midnight and found a darling hotel, with vacancy, at a good price, right across from the harbor. It was definitely an answer to prayers.
After checking in, we hit up Denny's at 1 am, because none of us had felt like eating during our driving, or had attempted to eat.....you get the picture :)
Fake-ish breakfast food never tasted so good! It was manna from heaven. We went back to our hotel and found that our rooms were even better than we imagined. So spacious and the front desk was so helpful. We were in for a good night's sleep!
^Faking that we love our Reno Hotel :)
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