We spent the morning on the the beach outside our hotel, which is surrounded byacres of sea grass, affording it tremendous solitude and adding to the eerie feeling that if any of the many tsunami warnings (run to high ground NOW!) were to 
be necessary, nobody would ever find us.Daniel continued on his quest to "touch a bird" but had to satisfy himself with the chase instead. Maddie and I simply marvelled at the beauty. Dana, meanwhile, was responsible and used the time to get some lawyering done.
After this lovely morning on the beach, we headed into the town of Ocean Shores for a day of exploration and fun, only to discover that there isn't much in Ocean Shores to explore (or that looked like much fun) This is the portion of the blog where you who are reading are saved from ever making a trek to this point on the map. Trust me - the photos are sufficient ;)
So... we headed to Aberdeen, most famous as the childhood home of Kurt Cobain (though, we discovered, also the location of "Tom Cruise Day" at some point in 2006). What I love about a day like this is how it allows you to get off the tourist map and 
live a day similar to the one the residents experience. On our way to Aberdeen, we stopped at a school playground in Hoquiam, where Daniel was lured by the sight of an "awesome" slide. This playground was full of whimsical equipment - a cross-over see-saw, multi-level swings - that suggested the creativity of the people in this very small town. In Aberdeen, which is so closely adjacent to Hoquiam that we never could quite figure out where one ended and the other began, we met a kind man who has operated a Star Wars memoribilia store for the past 30 years. The store has a little section devoted to Kurt Cobain. When the gentleman had to head out for a bit, he left the store in the hands of a kid (his grandson?) who couldn't have been older than 12 or 13. The whole experience was just wonderful (though Dana used it as a chance to gleefully "bloggie" about how rich Clay could have been if only Mom hadn't given away all of his Star Wars toys all those years ago :)
live a day similar to the one the residents experience. On our way to Aberdeen, we stopped at a school playground in Hoquiam, where Daniel was lured by the sight of an "awesome" slide. This playground was full of whimsical equipment - a cross-over see-saw, multi-level swings - that suggested the creativity of the people in this very small town. In Aberdeen, which is so closely adjacent to Hoquiam that we never could quite figure out where one ended and the other began, we met a kind man who has operated a Star Wars memoribilia store for the past 30 years. The store has a little section devoted to Kurt Cobain. When the gentleman had to head out for a bit, he left the store in the hands of a kid (his grandson?) who couldn't have been older than 12 or 13. The whole experience was just wonderful (though Dana used it as a chance to gleefully "bloggie" about how rich Clay could have been if only Mom hadn't given away all of his Star Wars toys all those years ago :)
Our late afternoon consisted of watching Inception in the sole state of the art theater in this part of Washington (I'm sure it was refurbished for "Tom Cruise Day") in a mall that had far more vacancies than open stores. Dana commented that it felt as though we were wandering through an episode of "Wonder Years," and it did all feel much like the place time forgot.
Still, we had a dinner in a local bar/grill with a notorious past (the owner had run a brothel in that very space and later been convicted of murder), then headed back to our Ocean Shores hotel (where Dana finally won in the casino!)
Today we leave Washington behind and head to the coast of Oregon. I hope we get a chance to see how "real" Oregonians live, just as we got this glimpse into the lives of those who call Aberdeen home.
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