Jump-cut to Seaside Oregon, where I walk the Promenade (known as the Prom), sometimes alone, but more often I walk the Prom with my husband. Have I mentioned that he has also taken up the habit of finding lucky money on the street? His daily output is tremendous. He finds at least three lucky pennies a day.
In Oregon, the Prom extends from Avenue U in the south of Seaside to 12th Avenue in the north. The Seaside Prom is a one-and-a-half-mile paved walkway bordering the Pacific Ocean. Pathways from the Prom break out into tall, windswept grass, groves of trees opening onto the beach and a yawning stretch of the Pacific Ocean. In the fifteen years that I’ve walked the prom, I’ve only found one penny.
Finding the second penny on the Prom happened quite mysteriously.
One day in September, we walked the distance for a quiet conversation. We had already walked the length of the Prom and now we were heading back to our starting point. There is a roundabout in the center of the Prom where people can turn around in a traffic circle to travel away from the ocean. A bronze statue of Lewis and Clark stands tall in the Promenade as a memorial capturing the end of their long journey and where they turned around, away from the Pacific Ocean, to travel back home.