#173 Boondock on HWY 101 near MM 30 between cannon beach and seaside big grassy pullout

We went north 2 hours and I couldn't find a good place to be for our next stop. We would be about an hour in Astoria so Days end directory said that when you're on Highway 101 between Cannon Beach and Seaside there were many pullouts available good for boondocking. I was just keeping my eyes open and I remember we had gone up and over a kind of a small mountain. As we were going down the descending side I saw mile marker 30 and there it was. A huge place, grassy field but on a slope. I could see that some people already using it for a place to camp as they were doing their bike riding stuff cross-country. The only problem I had was it was very unlevel. It sloped kind of to the right or towards the highway. I was up there and for the life of me I tried to get it level but there just wasn't a real good way to do it. I found myself in a muddy area and almost got hung up a bit and then finally got out of that mess. I said to myself you know it might not be perfect but we're going to make this work because I can't get level. I put whatever wood I could muster under the wheels and jacked it up as high as I could.

During the night I thought I'm going to remember this clearly because it was about the most miserable night of sleep that I ever had. While trying to sleep like it felt like you were sliding off the bed. I think we went sideways to the bed just to keep all the blood from going to your head or your feet. It was pretty uncomfortable but I guess we slept at some level.

The next morning the conditions had changed. Now the maybe knee-high grass was wet and wet grass is just kind of like snow. I decided okay let's leave and the hillside said no. The wet grass said let's get stuck. I couldn't go forward uphill at all. I backed up a little bit and tried to get a little bit of elevation so I could get a little bit of a head start. Then you just aim down the hill diagonally off-road and don’t sow down. This is one of those things where it's like I hope this works, hit the gas.

Getting stuck in a Volkswagen is no big deal. In a 40 ft long rig, you don't get stuck because if you do, your kind of screwed. You will probably have to get help for one or $200 from a tow company. Easing out of there was wonderful and I got some grace I probably didn't deserve, but that's my weird life.

I can tell you as we left out of there, I was very grateful.

There was one more notable thing about this stop. After we got settled, we rode down the hill thinking we might find some sort of place to get a bite to eat. I remember it's just such a small not even a town let's call it a crossroads. It seemed like there might have been something there once but it's all dried up and boarded up now.

Over on the right-hand side, it was like a sprawling flea market with about10 buildings all tacked together that used to sell something or be something and now they're just boarded up and abandoned.

On the left side there was a gas station and then a place that I call Suzie's Diner. That's not what the name of it was but it's just a diner where you get meat two vegetables biscuits and tea for 8 bucks. The real name of the place was the Sea Breeze Restaurant and lounge.

They're all over the country and kind of would say I did steal the name from Suzie's Diner in Kernersville but that's just a bunny trail.

If you were going to say I wonder where we should eat tonight it's either Suzie's Diner here on the left or a gas station hot dog that's been spinning around for 2 days, believe me, Suzie wins hands down. It was delicious and wonderful but there weren't other choices anyway so we were glad.

We had a nice meal went back up the hill. I remember we had an internet signal there so everybody was happy.