Shower the horse I'm done

 - Carys -

Fruit, pie & bread was how our day began, namely with breakfast. However, Bryn's meal of choice was chocloate - not very appropriate at 8am. Refreshed and full, we packed up our bags and  ciao adios our lovely apartment. We hopped in a taxi to the car rental shop, where we acquired a new family member.

Dad named our new Dodge Caravan, 'The BEast' because of its ginormous size. It is a six seater car, and even the seats recline.So, naturally we were all very happy about it.

The journey to Salem, Oregon from Seattle took around 5 hours, due to traffic, toilet breaks and cautious driving. Despite this though I enjoyed the car ride, mostly reading and sleeping, aswell as world-watching, gazing outside at our lovely planet.

Once we had arrived at our accomodation, we made ourseleves right at home, delving through our clothes and kicking off shoes, but not for long. To avoid the heat (even though it was already very high) we went for a run. This all turned into  large fiasco though. WE got lost, didn't know where we were, kept stopping and starting, and to make matters worse the heat and smokey air made us feel terrible. In the end, mum and I managed home, whilst the boys carried on. We didn't realise untill their return an hour or so later, that they had got lost and missed the turning for the hotel. We' d assumed they had just decided to run some more. (Lloyd - yes, that would have been a better story)

Anyway, fiasco over, we went for a nice diip in the nice pool, to cool off and relax. That was lovely and well needed. After showers and deliberation, we agreed to go for another Denny's. Ir was okay, though we all felt quite guilty about the calories.

Nevertheless, here we are, satisfied and tired, ready for more adventures tomorrow.

(Lloyd)

Spent the last few hours in Seattle in our Air BNB, eating up the remains of our food from yesterday.  Made for a very peculiar breakfast of onion, peach and feta savoury pastry, key lime pie and peanut butter cookies. Oh, that run is needed ... Lovely to relax and feel at home while Seattle went about its morning business.

Caught a taxi downtown to Avis to collect our hire car.  On the face of it went smoothly, and we were upgraded to something they were referring to the caravan, I have chosen to call it the presidential 'beast'. Am sure Trump wouldn't have sat nav problems (although maybe metaphorically he does have serious ones) as the one we were given was faulty so our first few hectic minutes was travelling around Avis offices in downtown Seattle in our new truck and not getting a new one. Ended up back amongst the hordes at Pike Place Market at one point and then up some very steep hills to escape. Automatic make those hill starts feel like a leap of faith!  Gave up on finding a new sat nav, stuck with what we have got, and hit the freeway.

4 hours drive today, turned into just over 5 with some very busy traffic around Portland, the many bridges and flyovers in that massive City slowing us all down. We crossed the State line at that point, leaving Washington for Oregon.  Plenty of trucks shipping logs up and down the freeway, and another town called Vancouver also noted. The fella George Vancouver originally scouted a lot of this area right up the Puget Sound.

Arrived in the Comfort Suites Salem, not the witch one, a decent stop off, near the freeway.  The complimentary juice and cookies very well received, we managed to miss out on the sarnies as we went for a family run. What should have been 3miles turned into 7 for Bryn and I as we somehow got lost on a simple square loop I had identified and ended up doing it twice. Don't ask, the girls sensibly did it once.  A bit more walking that intended trying to work out where we were, but a tidy little pace set at times in between.

Watch us going round and round here https://www.strava.com/activities/1791228208


Warmed down and calmed down when we eventually refound our accommodation, took a swim, Bryn used the weights room.  None of us all that hungry but went for a Dennys which I didn't really enjoy. Tried a portion of nacho tots which just didn't want to go down, the mango smoothie was the highlight, before walking home and my bed was calling.