Winter at the Coast

 Free weekend! Always a happy thing when JD passes his exam and we can go play.  I wanted to celebrate getting to be home with our cute little guy more and so this weekend we decided to head to Indian Beach, one of our favorite gems on the Oregon Coast.  It has a light house, great tide pools, sandy beaches, and is a little more secluded.  It was a little bit chilly but not too horrible.  We were able to check out the pools and listen to the waves.  I love living so close to the ocean and being able to go as often as we do. Also notice that Porter is sitting up on his own unassisted? That is his fun trick that I worked on like crazy so that we could do his 6 month photos with Auntie Allie sitting up.  He loves being able to look around, but still flops over when he gets excited.

Mt Hood

Today was a free Saturday so we got to go on a new adventure.  The debate was between the ocean and a mountain.  We decided to do something new and Mount Saint Helens was a longer drive away than Mount Hood so we got to go to Mount Hood.  The 'mountains' here are much different than the Rockies. Elevation, rolling hills, and distinct, solitary peaks of the Cascades feel odd compared with the jagged ranges of Utah.  The drive was beautiful, the mountain was grand, and the weather was perfect for being on top of Hood.    We had a lot of fun and enjoyed spending time together.  Porter fell asleep when we got in the car, slept while we explored the Timberline Lodge and rode the lift up to the top of Hood, and then he slept all the way home so that kind of threw off our sleeping and eating schedule a little bit, totally worth the experience though.

L.L. Stub State Park

Free weekend!!!!  We are all still in recovery mode from having a baby, school, visitors, etc that we decided to stay a little bit closer to home.  We were able to go to L.L. Stub State Park for the first time.  I was going crazy without going hiking or being in trees or seeing ocean so our adventure was just the medicine that I needed.  We were able to hike around the park including part of the Veronia/Banks Trail-which I guess is a big deal, I don't know.  Porter was a champ, loved his Ergobaby carrier, and slept the whole time.  I was pretty worn out physically by the time we were getting back in the car, but my goodness it felt good to hike again.

Garners at the Gorge

We got to see the Garner's!  It was so good to see our good friends for a couple of days while they were here on vacation.  It was fun getting caught up telling tales of pharmacy and med school, babies, and being pregnant.  We got to hang out for a bit Saturday evening and Sunday we went to 5 different waterfalls in the Gorge and the International Rose Test Garden.  It was very rainy and so we were wet but luckily that didn't spoil the things we were able to see and do-though maybe our hair would beg to differ. 

Two pregnant friends.  We are about 12 weeks apart and I must say I am glad that I am the one who is closer to the end.  We are getting excited to meet this little guy.

The roses were beautiful!  I loved the rain drops all over them and how the whole garden is in full bloom again.  We found a rose that we thought would be a good namesake for the next Garner baby: Rainbow Sunblaze, fingers crossed that it sticks!

Cannon Beach Sand Castle Fesitval

Several years ago, my family got to see the end product of the sand castles left over from the festival completely by accident.  I thought they were amazing.  So this year, I have been doing my best to figure out when the festival was (they aren't super good at publicizing it).  I talked JD into going in a trade where last weekend we had to be 'responsible' and do things like clean and go though paperwork, and other boring grown up stuff like that.  Incentive was that we could go to the Sand Castle Festival. 
JD was up and ready to go at 5:15 AM, for those of you who are familiar with JD's sleeping habits, this is amazing.  He didn't want to mess with crowds and parking so we found ourselves in Cannon Beach slightly after 7, and yes, we did get an amazing parking spot, and no, there was not immediate competition when we first arrived though by 8 all available spots were taken.
We ate breakfast at the American Legion Lodge, it was really good they had eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits and gravy, fruit, and pancakes.  It was buffet style so JD got lots of sausage.  We were on the beach at 8 when they let the "Masters" begin their competition.  They had prebuilt boards and rings for packing sand and a ton of water buckets to mix the sand.  9:00 let all other participants begin their work. A back hoe came in and dug several water holes though we did find a group that had created their own pumping and hose system that resembled a step machine. 
The rest of our day consisted of watching the different group's 'castles' take shape.  There was a Candy Land one (won the Masters and $1200 ), The Other Side of the Stack that was a pretty cool castle of Haystack Rock with a fairy tail style back side, a golfer in a sand trap, a bath tub being drained, tiki men, bears taking over a camp site, a 60th birthday cake among many others.  It was fascinating to see the Master's build up and shape their sand formations.   We had a lot of fun, staying until the tide came back in, we will have to see where we are this time next year and if we will be able to go again.

Oregon Zoo

We got to go to the Oregon Zoo today with Will and Ally.  It is a pretty cool zoo, I loved the river otters the best.  The zoo is part of Forest Park and therefore there are trees everywhere, some of the animal areas are just forested portions that have been built up for safety.  They have a baby river otter, elephant, and monkey and we got to see all three of them up, awake, and playing.  We were able to see the whole zoo and still have time to go berry picking on Sauvie Island afterwards.  The strawberries are amazing, and thankfully JD was a very good sport in picking most of them....I started to pick and it didn't take long before I realized the baby wasn't such a big fan of standing up and bending down over and over again to pick the biggest bestest berries.

Speth Trip Day 5: Astoria, Seaside, Ecola

Final Full Day in Oregon=Coast

This day included the Astoria Column complete with flying an airplane off the top of the column.  Ft Stevens State Park, seeing the ship wreck and photo bombing Miranda's mad tumbling skills.  Seaside, seeing a 2 week old baby harbor seal and playing in the touch pool.  Ecola State Park, tide pooling and hanging out on Indian Beach.  We had a really good dinner at La Fogata, a Mexican place near us that has foot long gigantic burritos.  It was a lot of fun having the Speth's here and having the chance to show them around Oregon and let them see part of the reason why we love it here so much. 

 

Speth Trip Day 3: Silver Falls

While I love Silver Falls and would have loved to go there with the family today, it was time for me to get back to work, and to be honest our little guy probably would not have been a very good friend to bring along on the 8.7 mile loop that takes you past 10 gorgeous waterfalls.  So JD got to go with everyone to experience the amazing Silver Falls State Park.  This is a place that is difficult to describe so it just goes more along the lines of if you come to see us, you must go there because while the pictures are nice and look cool, it is even more incredible in person.

Coast Trip Day 3: Coos Bay to Crescent City

The sun came out today! We loved driving down the coast from Coos Bay.  We stopped at Cape Arago and saw a ton of sea lions basking in the sun and playing in the water. Arizona Beach is unique because it has black sand, you have to cross a small river to get to it so I had to go solo and take a picture since JD didn't want to take his shoes off (I always wear flip flops when at the ocean). We also make several stops in Samuel H Boardman State Park that included Arch Rock.  We relaxed on Harris Beach State Park for a bit before crossing the border into California.  I love the Redwood Highway, while they are not old growth trees, it is still fun to drive on a highway lined with younger Redwoods.  We went straight to the National/State Park Visitor Center to get some maps for our Redwood adventure and then followed with going to Battery Point Lighthouse.  I had been watching the tide and knew we needed to get over there quick, the lighthouse is only accessible when the tide is out, but we were more interested in the tidepooling by the lighthouse.  We saw crabs, hermit crabs, star fish, and other fun things.  I wish I were has talented as JD at balancing and hopping around rocks.  I had to go very slow and even then I wasn't super stable.  After dinner we went to Crescent Beach and watched surfers (yes we are now in California) and the sun set.  It was super pretty and the weather was great.