Summer 2008--Shopping in Portland

[Friday, 11 July 2008; Woodburn to Portland]--After yesterday, when we visited Elynor's cousin, Bill and his wife, Marvel, in Mount Angel, today was a dullish day with the short drive from Woodburn where we "enjoyed" another screw-up at the Super 8 the evening before. It seems that they didn't have our reservations -- they had us listed as "noshows" for the night before! So Grumpy had to be his true self: Grumpy!! [Grr-r-r-r!!!]. Ultimately we got a room satisfactory to our specifications, and at the before agreed-to rate -- and with the promise that "the manager will probably refund the guaranteed payment" due to the alleged noshow the previous night.

As I said in the above paragraph, today was a dullish day, or would have been except that we did a bunch of shopping at a nearby Wal*Mart store. "Bunch of shopping" is hereby defined as $502.54 worth!! This may be a record for Grumpy and the Grand Mother in one shopping trip where nothing larger than a 24-roll package of toilet paper is purchased. The excitement came when we took the two(!) shopping cart-fulls out and tried to fit them in our Accord. The trunk having been pretty well filled at the outset of our trip -- and further "stuffed" with more "stuff" that we bought along the way -- so Grumpy had the challenge of repacking/rearranging the luggage and souvenirs so that the roughly two cubic yards of Wal*Mart purchases could be loaded. Eventually all was onboard and we felt rather victorious -- until later, as you shall learn in the next (Saturday's) posting.