At roughly 5:30 on Saturday morning, we hit Starbucks for coffee and breakfast (I do NOT recommend the bacon Gouda breakfast sandwiches) before jumping on the freeway. In one car rode myself, my roommate and her kids; in the other, my mother and sister. In Boardman, we stopped to visit with my aunt for a few minutes and gas up the vehicles. At that point, the roommate's kids hopped in the car with my Mom and Sis so their mother could crawl in my back seat, and then it was straight through to Portland. We reconvened at a shopping mall that I don't recall the name of, where the roommate's BFF awaited to whisk her and the younger child away to the Oregon Coast.
The older child would stay with me and my family, spending the rest of the day and part of Sunday exploring Portland. Sunday evening we would drive to Albany to visit with my cousin and her kids, and after a bit of that I would continue on to the Coast alone to spend the night relaxing (and hopefully indulging my rarely-addressed seafood cravings). Monday morning I would collect the roommate and younger kid, swing back by Albany for the older kid, and then head homeward. Yes, I agree that it seems a bit insane looking at it all laid out like that, but at the time it seemed perfectly sensible (or maybe I was just glad to be out of town for the weekend). We checked into our hotel, which was a lot nicer than I expected, even though they charge three bucks to rent one of their severely limited selection of videotapes and were completely out of complimentary cookies. Then, it was on to lunch.
