Beautiful Oregon

Seals on the beach in Lincoln City

Lee and I got back from our Oregon vacation a few months ago. It was wonderful!  The trip out there was long and I was surprised at how hard the jet lag hit me.  It's only a two hour time difference, but it threw me off completely.

Glass Blowing

We started our vacation in Lincoln City on the beach.  The beach was much different than any beach I've been on.  The beach was covered in washed up trees.  There were several spots where people had set up campfires with the logs that has washed up. Also, there were seals on the beach!

While we were at the beach, Adam and Lee decided to jump in.  After all, you can't visit the west coast and not swim in the Pacific.  I didn't.  That water is freezing!  On our way back from the beach, Adam and Lee tried to warm up and we took our time looking at the small, local shops.  

When we got back, we had dinner and hung out in Aunt Sis's cool backyard.  It's awesomely decorated in a luau theme.  We had smores and played horseshoes and then headed to bed.  The next morning we got ready and went to the art studio to blow glass.  I knew a glass-blowing major in college and I thought it was really neat.

Glass blowing was an interesting experience. Margot volunteered to go first.  While heating and turning her glass, she dropped a big blob.  We learned pretty quick that it's extremely important to keep turning the glass.  When it was my turn, I chose red and creme as my colors.  The heat was intense.  I burnt my fingers at one point and we had to put my pole under water to cool it down.  It was a pretty neat thing to try out.  We left our glass floats at the studio to cool.  The rest of the day was spent heading to Newport and hitting a few stops along the way.

The views of the coast were breathtaking.  It was really awesome to see a different type of beach.  While at the Devil's Punchbowl, we saw several squirrels running around.  There were peanut shells all over the ground, so Adam picked one up.  A squirrel came running up to get it.  He was disappointed when Adam just gave him the shell.  We wanted to play with the squirrels some more, but we didn't have any food and we wanted to make it to Newport before dark.  

We kept on our way to Newport and made it with plenty of daylight left.  We parked next to the pier and stopped to take pictures of all the boats.  We walked along the sidewalk and tried to cover our noses as we passed all the fish in the big bins.  Also, we had to try to not step in the flowing fish-nastiness water. The whole time we were walking, we could hear seals making all kinds of noise.  We walked out on the dock and saw the platforms below that the seals had swam up on. 

Apparently these seals just lay around all day on those docks and people just walk around and take pictures.  Seals always seemed cute in pictures and videos.  They were actually pretty gross in real life.  They were really neat to see, but I probably wouldn't hang out with them everyday.

We walked around the small town some more and visited the small, local shops. The shops were cute.  We took our time looking around, but didn't take too long.  These small shops didn't stay open very late.  We made it to the end of the small strip of town and Lee got to take pictures of the bridge.  He got to take pictures and he also got to drive over the bridge soon after.  We headed back to Aunt Sis's to crash for the night.  We planned our next day and then went to bed.

Because Lee and Adam wanted to hike and see some wildlife, Aunt Sis told us a place to go.  She said just around the corner on the beach, there was a place to climb on rocks and see creatures.  So we headed out to find the rocks and creatures.

The rocks that were just around the corner ended up being two miles away.  Two miles isn't bad.  Two miles in the sand is.  We finally got to the rocks and there was a big creek to jump over.  I was nervous about jumping, so I was handing my camera to Lee and it dropped right in the water.  We took the battery and memory card out and tried to dry it as much as possible.

It was very sad.  We climbed around on the rocks, and it was pretty cool.  We saw starfish, anemones, and muscles.  If you touched the muscles, they spit at you.  The starfish were not nearly as easy to pick up as I thought (they were pretty firmly stuck), and the anemones closed tightly if you touched them.  I'm sure I was acting like a little kid exploring, but it was fun.  After we were thoroughly satisfied with our exploration, we headed back.

  Other fun things while in Lincoln City included eating Thai and walking the streets to check out the local shops.  Adam's goal was to find some good taffy, and he found plenty.  It was a nice, little city.  We headed to Oregon City to hang out with the rest of the family.  We had fun with the family and our first big event in Oregon City followed the next morning. I'm upset I don't have any pictures from this event, but I didn't have a waterproof camera.  My family has their own rafts, so we went down to the Clackamus River and rafted.  

It was a really beautiful river - as I'm sure most of the rivers in Oregon are.  The whole group of us headed down the river, paddled through a few rough spots, and stopped to swim.  I enjoyed getting to do something fun like that with family I hadn't spent time with in a really long time.  After packing up, we headed out to get food.  We were starving after spending 4 hours on the water.  We stopped at a little place that had great burgers and a really neat atmosphere.The next morning we decided to go up to Mount Hood.  On the way up, we stopped at an alpine slide.  It was actually really hot that day.

We tried to stay in the shade while a few in our group went to ride the slide.  My family was getting a kick out of the place because they hadn't seen it without snow.  Our next stop was a lake - Trillium Lake.  The lake was beautiful.  As it was the only hot week of the year, the lake was packed with people.  We actually weren't going to be allowed in because there were no more parking spots, but we talked the people into just letting us drive back to see it.  There were tons of people scattered across the lake in small rafts.  I could have spent all day there - I love the water. Our last stop was the Timberline lodge - popularly known as the hotel where "The Shining" was filmed.  

It's really interesting though, the lodge looks like the one from the movie from the outside, but the inside is completely different.  In the movie, it's big and open.  In real life, it looks more like a lodge - all logs.  It was wonderful on the inside. I wouldn't mind staying there at all. It really was a timberline lodge, too.  The trees just stopped at that level.  Once we were done touring the place, we headed back down to get something to eat.  We stopped at a little place called Skyway.  I saw barbecue on the menu and it sounded really good, so I ordered it.  I don't know what I was thinking, but I should have known not to order barbecue from somewhere that wasn't in the south.  It was terrible!  I definitely won't do that again.  That was the last big day of our trip.  We played games with the family.  It was fun because I definitely come from a creative family.  The next morning, mom showed us where she grew up before she took us to the airport.  I could put a picture to the stories now.  The flight back was long of course and we were ready to crash when we got back around midnight.  Overall, it was a really fun trip and I'm really glad I got to spend time with my family.  I only wish the trip would have been longer!