On Wednesday, Ana and Keith arrived in Portland. We spent the day going through the last of the items in our apartment. We had lunch at one of our favorite places in Vancouver, The Grocery Social and Cocktail. We were still in the grips of a heatwave so not much wandering in town. To escape the heat on Thursday we headed toward Astoria, Oregon. Back in June, we'd gone to meet up with our friends at their campground in Warrenton, just outside of Astoria. We'd booked a room in Astoria and the plan was to spend the evening at the campground and then meet up again the next day to go to the beach. We had our dog Romy with us and it was to be his first time at the beach. Even though we didn't live that far from the coast when we lived in California, we always feared that if we took him to the beach he would somehow get loose, run to Mexico and that would be that. But Romy had been recently diagnosed with osteosarcoma and it was already pretty advanced and the vet agreed that a trip to the beach would be a perfect outing for him.Â
But it wasn't to be. He had a rough and restless night at the hotel and instead of going to the beach the next day we got in our car and drove home before 6am. We said goodbye to him that night.Â
Astoria felt like an unfinished story. So we went to Astoria, we went to the beach and we missed Romy.Â