Coastal Adventures

The joke in the family is that when I look at places on Google Maps, they all look so close, that I invariably ask "Why not visit there, and there, and there?" After all, New York is just a jaunt from Wisconsin.. and Nova Scotia is not far from there... and Greenland is just a little ways off shore. - You get the idea. Noel seems to find the most amusement in my view of global geography.

 At any rate... that is how we ended up at the Oregon coast. What is another 1,400 miles after crossing the country in same distance the week before? I also wanted to spend my 40th birthday doing something other than laundry. - Thus a trek to the coast was born.

 Below is Asher's face when we first pulled into our campground on the coast. The first site of the ocean is pretty spectacular. His voice kept going up with aniticipation..."Oh! Oh! Oh!" as his fingers drummed against his chin.

 

 We headed down to the beach.. where everyone promptly got totally soaked.

We spent hours chasing in and out of the waves.. 

At low tide, we walked to the far end of the beach (Cape Lookout, Oregon)  and climbed up on some rocks to watch the waves.  The boys developed a rating system, and spent an hour judgeing the height of the various waves by how close to use they splashed spray.

Sylvia relied on Asher to protect her from the ocean.  She decided after the trip that she prefered swimming in a swimming pool.

We had a great time beachcombing.  Sylvia found a creek flowing onto the beach that was perfect for washing all our sand dollars in.

The beach in this area is over 2 miles long... and we walked most of it - back and forth.  We had a good time looking for sand dollars, and trying to avoid "sneaker waves".

This picture was taken by some people also out enjoying the sunset.  It was a good way to end my 40th birthday.  I think though, that for my 50th... I'd like to spend it above the Arctic Circle in Sweden.  - We'd better start saving.

Since the tide pools along our campground beach were less than impressive, we got up early the next morning and went to Cape Kiwanda, about 30 miles south.  It had some spectacular rock formations, and great tide pools.  We got there at 7 am, in drizzling rain, but nobody cared.  It was amazing scenery.

The plants in the pools were almost as exciting for me to see as the animals.  I loved the lacey pink plants edging several of the pools.  We also were very surprised to pick up a pretty shell and have legs explode out and start wiggling.  Sylvia screamed and threw the shell in the air.  We are now familiar with hermit crabs.

Sylvia thought it was very exciting to discover a heart shaped tide-pool.  I'm sure God made it just for her.

This beach was really fun to explore on.  It had lots of rocks jutting out into the waves, so it was a bit like a maze to find your way around from one to the other.

On the last day, the sunshine cam out... and the kids decided to try a new game.  (Their old game had been to stand in the water for 3 hours, up to their waists, get totally numb from the cold, and not get knocked over or sucked out to sea.)   This new game was were the boys would form a blockade, and try to keep Sylvia safe from the waves.

It didn't always work as planned.  But, it was exciting to watch.

This wave coming in the picture below continued on, totally rolling everybody over on their backs, and scraping them along the sand.  Asher had the pressense of mind to grab Sylvia and keep her head above water as they were being tossed along like little pebbles.
    After that wave, Sylvia decided this was not a good game to play... and we moved back about 30 feet where only our toes got foamed.

The boys were a great help with cooking dinner and setting up and taking down tents - even in the pouring rain.  Sylvia relaxed the last night, and enjoyed drawing picutures of ocean rocks covered with fairies, mermaids, and characters from Avatar.

    The point of the trip was to show Sylvia the ocean... and have a good time. It was a success. Everyone was amazed by the beauty of the coast, and the power of the ocean waves   It is so big.  No pictures can ever really show how big the ocean is.   It was very memorable.. . and definitely worth the trip.