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.

Fox Family Day Trip

 
 
The Fox's were the first people in our ward that we met when we moved here-they were actually our apartment managers and we got to know them pretty well and they have become great friends during our stay here in Oregon.  They were nice enough to invite me to come with them for a day trip to the Tillamook Cheese Factory and to Cape Outlook State Park.  The weather was amazing: sunny, 70 degrees, light warm breeze, and perfect.  Savannah and I had fun chatting and watching their kids run around.  We are definitely grateful for the friends that we have made and the ward family we have.

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.

Oregoned Out

What a crazy couple of weeks we have had!  We had our own mini vacation down the coast, the Speths came to play, and we got to hang out with our pharmacy friends.  JD has traveled all but about 34.7 miles of the Oregon Highway 101 of 346 miles total in less than 2 weeks and a total of 3 ocean trips.  We have done a ton of new things, seen a lot of animals, trees, beaches, ocean, a new temple, and where JD will be doing a few rotations as well.  Last night I asked JD what he wanted to do (it being Friday and all) and his response was 'nothing'.  I said that is fine, do you want to watch a movie or something? He just looked at me and repeated 'nothing'.  That should give you an idea of just how busy his break has been.  Regardless of our current physical state, we are both so grateful for the time we have had to spend together and with our family as well as the incredible things we have been able to see and enjoy.  We feel truly blessed to be here in Oregon.

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 2: Cape Outlook to Cannon

Happy Memorial Day!

This year it was a wet one.  While it was cold and wet, I do have to say I'm fairly certain that it is a good thing, what could have been a nightmareish busy day on the 101 turned out to be empty, parking was a breeze, there was not a single person in line at the Tillamook Cheese Factory, and we were able to see a lot more coast than we were expecting.  We started in Tillamook and Cape Outlook-where they found full size, unbroken sand dollars and we got to see 'new' waterfalls because of all the rain, we got to go up to the lens of Cape Meares Lighthouse as well.  Other fun sites along the way was a stop at the empty Tillamook Jerky Outlet and Mo's-famous clam chowder, also famous for long lines which were non existent today.  We walked on Cannon Beach before heading back home for another round of games.  It was a good day and while sun would have been nice, it would have made doing everything we did a lot harder.  I'm officially worn out and thinking that working while the Speth's do the rest of the things we have planned is probably a good thing with how drained I feel after a week of playing.

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.

Coast Trip Day 2: Lincoln to Coos Bay

It was a rather rainy day for us, but the sun would occasionally peak it's head out and the weather didn't do anything to change our plans.  We got to see the waves crashing into the ocean wall at Depoe Bay, Sea Lions coming in to rest on the rocks in the sea lion caves, JD found his first agate on Agate Beach, we saw some lighthouses, and had fun enjoying the coast line.  Below is a clip of a 'spouting horn' a formation in the rock that when crashing water is funneled through it is forced up through small openings in the rock, the more water and pressure, the higher the spout.

Coast Trip Day 1: Lincoln City

After a rather long day of getting a 3 hour glucose test, work, and driving, we got to Lincoln City to start our trip.  I love Lincoln City, my family would spend hours crabbing in the bay and enjoy hiking and eating at Mo's.  While we didn't crab, we did go to the D River Beach.  The D River is the shortest river in the world (at high tide).  The water is slightly warmer than the ocean so it is fun to stand in the water there.  It had been raining all day so we were thrilled to enjoy a break in bad weather as soon as we had finished unloading our car and were headed to the beach.

Whale Week

I was looking up the different state parks in Oregon since we now have a pass and discovered that there is a wonderful thing called Whale Week which takes place twice a year in honor of the migration of the Grey Whales to and from Alaska all along the Oregon Coast.  We had so much fun watching a mom and baby whale swim around and trying to see all the whales that the 'expert' volunteers were seeing.  When we got to Ecola the count was at 14 and when we left it was 37.  Not bad for two hours.  After the whales we drove down to Nehalem Bay State Park.  It is kind of fun how much the Oregon Coast changes so quickly.  Ecola/Cannon is very fine sand and flat, Nehalem has a lot of sand dunes that are crested with grass before going to the beach and ocean.  It was a really fun day on the coast, I feel spoiled getting to go twice in a month.  

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