Oregon

 

After our trip to San Diego last year, our recent trip to Oregon was another confirmation that we simply love the West Coast.  On Thursday we gathered up into our mini-van and headed off on a 4-day road trip out west.  The whole trip was about a week and a half.

The beginning was just like we remembered.  Boring.  The first day is really nothing to look at.  Endless plains.  I actually like this, being around trees all the time, but eventually, it does get a bit old.

Finally, on the second day, we started to see hope.  The Rockies were there waiting for us and it was great to see them coming for what felt like half the day.

Our first stop was Yellowstone.  Here we are right on the outside in a small town by the NW entrance.

At first, when you see buffalo it's exciting, then they're everywhere.  -Still exciting.

Yellowstone was cold and we didn't get to see very much as a lot of it was covered by snow.

Since our hotel didn't have a pool, Lisa did some searching and found an outdoor naturally-heated thermal hot tub/pool thing.  It was great.  Nice and cool outside, very warm inside.  The kids had a great time swimming in the warm water for a while.

Pictures really don't do it justice.  -A theme for this trip.  We stopped here quickly after getting some gas.

I didn't know Idaho was so beautiful. These cliffs followed the river for miles and miles.

Finally, we arrived at our Home Exchange.  Great little vacation house very close to the ocean.  I say little, but it's bigger than our house.  My only issue was the cooking situation.  -Not great.  Everything else was wonderful.  I always love visiting others people's houses, mostly for the insanely large master bedrooms.  That will never get old.

I felt like we all snuck out the next morning to get a view of the coast.  So great.

The town we stayed in was Yachats.  Wonderful small town.  The best we saw from all the towns we visited.  It was actually listed as a place to visit if you're spending time in Oregon.

Though there was a lot of rain, on the first day we had some great sunshine.  These beaches just don't end.

Long walks along the coast.  -That basically sums up most of our vacations.

So.  Weird thing.  Lisa was texting with her family and her brother, Eric, suddenly realized he was three hours away visiting a friend in Portland.  So he borrowed his car and came and visited us for a day.  Great seeing him.  This picture also describes the fascination our kids had with the woods on the trip.  I think they spent half the time playing in the woods, with the Oregon coast just steps away.

As is our custom, we ordered some great locally-made seafood for one of the nights.

Almost all of the coast looked like this.

Here is a great lighthouse we visited on the second day.

On the beach below the lighthouse.

Looking for more touristy sites, we were directed to a cove full of seals.  They told us there were about 200 seals down there, and they weren't exaggerating.  

Back to the beach.  On the other side of the beach dunes was a huge area that was basically just dunes.  In fact, one town was called "Dune City" and another was "Reedsport".  Reedsport was the place to be.  I saw people on ATV's and something like dune-buggies riding all over the place.  It was at this point I started hatching a plan... more on that later.

This was a fun little climb, on a beach where climbing wasn't allowed.  And I could see why.

Another lighthouse.  I think we visited three.  It was seriously windy on this day.  Kellan was not a fan.

One of the days we went to Newport and looked around.  Their aquarium was... okay.  Fun to see with the kids and great for a rainy day.

They also had something like a kid's aquarium right next door.  Kellan had a blast there.  

So, the dunes.  Lisa and I talked about it.  It was expensive, but man...  I had to try it out, and I knew the kids would LOVE it.  We took off on Friday early afternoon and started the hour drive back down to the dunes.  Finn never made it.  He had woken up sick and throwing up and after 10 minutes in the car, we had to head home.  So I left again with just Cora and Layla.  

Cora was SUPER excited when we got there, as it was sort of a surprise.  Here is the two-seater Cora and I rented.  

Layla got her own ATV.  She was really excited as well, but also a bit apprehensive.

Great time.  Finn was bummed out for sure.  We tried not to talk about it a lot.  Oh my gosh though...  so much fun.

Layla, Cora, and I stopped here on our way back from the dunes.

More Oregon.  

So after a week, we left.  We were all sad to go, especially Kellan.  Every time we said were going back to the house, Kellan kept getting worried that we were going to head back to our house in Minnesota.  We had to start calling our house the "cabin", just so he would stop worrying and bringing it up.

On the way back we stayed with Lisa's cousin Heather and her family.  She will talk about anything and everything.  Lots to say.  I really liked seeing her collection of artwork from basically anywhere.  

The morning we woke up at Heather's it was Easter.  Incredibly, she had stayed up and hidden easter eggs for our kids to find before we left.  We were amazed, to say the least.  She also made crepes for breakfast, which she used to do out of a food truck.

Our last "big" stop was..  somewhere.  I don't remember where.  Idaho maybe.  Finn, Cora, Kellan, and I climbed a little hill to have a look around.  The hill was basically made out of mud, which we realized while walking/sliding down.  We got horribly dirty and it took me 45 min to clean the clay and mud out of everyone's boots when we got home.

The day after we got back from Oregon was the day I went and picked up our new puppy, Watson.  Finn was basically in tears.  He has been taking allergy shots for the past year in preparation for having a dog, and the whole family has been looking forward to it for a while.

So now we have a dog.