"HISTORICAL MARKER!" Grandma calls, pointing to a little dirt pullout with a brown sign I've just sped past.

"I don't think we can make a U–turn," I say, pressing the accelerator a little harder. "Your grandfather would have stopped," she says, not spitefully, though clearly I'm not living up to the family name. "We stopped at every sight."

"Every sight?" I challenge.

"Some days we traveled 500 miles. Some days 50. At the Grand Canyon, we drove 20 miles in two days. How are you gonna learn if you don't stop and look!"

Vera's Travel Tip #3: Slow down and check out everything.

Thankfully, nothing of historical significance apparently ever happened between Tillamook and Pacific City, the beach town we stumble upon ten miles off Highway 101. Taking a little Eric time, I buy a double scoop of mint chocolate chip and rent a purple Shredder 9.0 foam–top surfboard. Glorious. I even catch a wave. I return to the RV to find Grandma and Glenys feeding a pack of bunnies and seasoning wholesome beef stew with salt packets poached from the Tillamook cheese factory.

The next day, our last on the road, we take off for the central coast. State parks, pullouts, and historic sites dot the map like chicken pox, and we cover just 62 miles between 10:15 and five o'clock, averaging around nine miles per hour.

"Oooh," Grandma says at our first stop, high above the dunes at Winema Wayfinding Point. "Look at the seeeeeagull."

I do. Why not. And because I've never really looked at a seagull before—I mean, I've seen thousands but never looked—it strikes me as a little mystery to see him, a fully ambulatory creature, standing on his right leg with the left tucked up under his chest, the Ralph Macchio of shorebirds.

Similar amusements occupy our time at mile 354 on the tripometer, mile 357, mile 365. At mile 369, the empty Rodea Point lookout, Grandma spots whales. The guidebook would have said that most gray whales had already migrated past, but there they are, a third of a mile out, their slick backs shimmering in the sun.

"Ha–ha! There's a third!" Grandma says, then: "You know, times were tough when I met your grandfather…"

I can already hear the end of the tangent—"Marry the wild ones: You can tame the wild ones, but you can't make the tame ones wild"—but so what. It dawns on me, perhaps belatedly, that Grandma's lessons aren't in her words but in her example. Without expensive meals, smooth roads, or even a college education, she got out in the world. And rather than grow hardened, like a true explorer she grew more sensitive, more appreciative and curious about little marvels like steep roads and overlooks, sights easily dismissed. Here I thought I was the adventurous one. I was wrong.

After a late–afternoon grilled cheese at historic Nye Beach, Grandma falls asleep in the front seat, hands still clutching the camera.

"Grandma, you wanna move to the back, take a nap?"

She startles awake. "I just did!"

Looking out on the dogs sprinting around the shallows, the long–winged birds trying to take off over rolling swells, the hundreds of people silhouetted against the bright sea—hand in hand, alone, or following kids—she turns to me and says, "Just think: This is the last time I'll see the Oregon coast."

Whoa. She's so stubbornly alive that I'd sort of forgotten she was 94.

"How's that make you feel?" I ask.

She smiles. "Just about right."