Goin' to the Beach!

Route of the Coast Starlight

Not my beautiful photo of Rockaway Beach

I have vacation again!  Woohoo! Having started a new job at the National Safety Council last March, I didn't have any vacation for the first year.  I should have negotiated that… But as of January 1, 2013, I get 80 hours...  Not much when you're used to taking off anytime you want to, but still... that other way had no security to speak of either.

I will be taking one week off in October, and the other 40 hours I broke into little pieces attached to holiday weekends throughout the year - which will give me more bang for my buck.

The first one is coming up on President's Day weekend... I'll fly to Los Angeles on Thursday night and then take the Coast Starlight on Friday morning. I will eat "gourmet" food in the dining car, keep track of the train's geographical progress and speed with my GPS, maybe even read a John Steinbeck book as I pass through Salinas. I will have breakfast around Klamath Falls somewhere.  Perhaps it will snow again (in Klamath Falls) as it did the last time I rode the Starlight through that place.

At Rockaway Beach, Oregon, I have a reservation at the Surfside Resort (motel).  I will stick pretty close to that place until I leave on Monday afternoon -- although I have Cape Lookout and Depoe Bay programmed into the GPS also just in case I feel like roaming around. Cape Meares State Park is in there as well.

And too soon I'll be home and working again... waiting anxiously for the next outing.  But surely lucky to get to go, huh?  Sometimes I'm glad I am not a farmer...