3rd Annual UEA Weekend Camping at Willard Bay

For the third year in a row we decided to do a family camping trip for UEA weekend.  The weather was perfect and we had a great time.  Because of the great weather the campground was packed like we've not seen it before.  Virtually every RV site in the Cottonwood Campground was taken by Thursday night, and the Willow Campground which has been closed the previous two years was about 1/3 full as well.  We didn't get our favorite spot, but everything worked out well despite that fact.  I guess we'll have to reserve ahead of time next year.

Right off the bat the two older girls and Ben were riding their bikes all over.  Abby was very reluctant to even try riding her bike.  "I don't like riding bikes" she firmly stated over and over.

She didn't even want to try for the first couple of hours, so for our first trip to Pelican Beach she rode on the back of my bike.

The ride to Pelican Beach was a daily occurrence.  There wasn't much to do but skip/throw rocks, but the ride there made it an appealing diversion.

Funny girl that Abby is, after our trip to the beach, she decided to give it a go.  It took a few minutes for her to get pretty comfortable riding, but once she did, she rode and rode...

...and rode...

...and rode for the next three days.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if she put more miles on her bike than the rest of us combined.

For this trip we invited Jody and Sarah to come with us.  They showed up later in the afternoon and joined right in with all of the bike riding going on.

Scout dinners our first night.  Yummy!

By 8:00, Sarah had expired and they went to bed.  We stayed around the campfire for a while, then headed into the trailer and watched Jaws (I didn't remember how violent the last scene was when Quint gets eaten, so I'm glad that Abby was asleep by the end).  The kids thought it was pretty good, but they didn't appreciate the tension buildup ("this is really slow!").

Even though it wasn't nearly as cold as the last two years, we are always glad in the morning to have electricity and electric heaters.  This year we added to our trailer equipment with a one of our old crock pots and a hotplate that I found at a neighbor's garage sale a week before.  Here we are getting our breakfast of scrambled eggs, hash browns, and toast ready.

We played several games over the three days, sometimes in Jody's trailer and sometimes out on the picnic table when it warmed up.

Abby and Sarah were sure glad to have each other.  They played together for hours while the older kids and grownups were busy doing other things.

Ben, doing what he does, gathering firewood.

In the last year Chevron had finished cleaning up the oil spill that happened here a year ago and, in the process, made some improvements like these new walking paths which we took on our second trip to Pelican Beach.

The trip to the beach took its toll on Sarah who zonked out on the way back to camp.

We were glad that we thought to throw some chalk and a four square ball in the truck before we left.  It became the go-to activity.  Even Sarah got in the game with us.

Our dinner that night was courtesy of our new (old) camp trailer crock pot: taco soup.  It's always nice to have a yummy meal ready for you that took 10 minutes preparing earlier in the afternoon.

The next night after teaching Jody and Sarah some of our campfire songs, we went back to the trailer and watched Clue (since it's a sort of Halloweeny movie).

We spent time riding bikes and playing more four square on Saturday morning before cleaning up camp.

And this time we got Jody to play along with us as well.

It was a great little getaway.  Fun and relaxing and full of lots of good memories.  We can't wait for next year.

The Great Northwest Vacation- Day 11- The Oregon Coast and Multnomah Falls

For our last day on the Oregon Coast, we planned on taking a tour of Yaquina Lighthouse just north of Newport.  Tours there are first come, first serve and they are limited, so we made sure to get there early.  Turns out that we were early enough to be there before they opened.  The nice old man that ran the place with his wife came out to raise the flag and it looked like he was having a little trouble, so I asked him if he'd like some help.  He let me do the honors.

Every time during the previous couple of days when we would talk about taking a tour of the lighthouse, we would always say "Ya-kwine'-a lighthouse, or Ya-key'-na, or Ya-kwin'-a, however you say it".  Helpfully, they had the pronunciation right there when you walk in the door.

We headed to the wildlife viewing area first since our tour wasn't going to start for another hour or so, and stopped for a quick picture of the lighthouse.

There was a lot of cool wildlife to see, like sea lions (with their pups), gulls...

cool colored urchins...

and we even saw a couple of grey whales spouting.

The tour of the lighthouse was super cool.  We had to climb 114 stairs (Elise counted) to get to the top.  Here are Malinda and Abby looking at the Fresnel lens at the top of the lighthouse.  I just love their expressions.

Our lighthouse tour guide was this super-nice girl who dressed in period clothes and explained all about how the lighthouse was built and maintained back in the day.  It totally felt like we were visiting a church history site with a nice sister missionary.  

The kids wanted to play a while in the visitor's center interactive center after the lighthouse tour.  They had fun with the old-school toys.

Abby wanted to stop at this place to get a picture on our way out of Newport (OK, it was really Malinda's idea, but Abby sure thought it was cool).

We hit Multnomah Falls just before we went to our hotel for the night.  It was just as beautiful as we remembered from our honeymoon almost 15 years previous.

The Great Northwest Vacation- Day 10- The Oregon Coast

Malinda and the kids got up at the crack of dawn to find more sand dollars on the beach.  They got pretty good at spotting them and had more success than the previous night.

We headed south from Seaside to Ecola Beach State Park. We wanted to get to the beach early since it was going to be a low tide.  Malinda had done her homework and it turned out to be an amazing place.

After driving to the park we made our way to the first overlook and tried to find a way down to the beach. That attempt failed miserably, but we were able to get there by driving to Indian Beach.

Ecola Beach State Park was a pretty cool place.  In the first half hour we found dozens of complete sand dollars, and there were tons of starfish, lots of crabs, and cool anemones to look at all over.

Jody and Sarah got to the beach a while after us, and by then all of the sand dollars had been gathered up by us and the few other beach combers, so we planted a few along the beach for Sarah to find.  She was so excited to pick them up and put them in the bag (after she got over her grumpiness caused by falling in the cold water... she did NOT like that at all!).

Sarah most definitely did not like this tiny crab I showed her. "That's disgust!"

After spending a couple of hours looking at and looking for cool sea creatures, the kids started to just play in the sand.  They had lots of fun building sand drip castles (aka poop castles).

Heading further south, we stopped at this pretty overlook, then headed on to Tillamook.

We enjoyed touring the cheese factory, trying out the free samples, and buying some fresh cheese curds.

Heading down to Newport to get to the hotel, we stopped just north of town to check out the Ocean House B&B, which is where Malinda and I stayed for a couple of nights on our honeymoon.

Dinner that night was at The Chowder Bowl, which is supposed to be one of the best seafood shops in town (according to the online reviews).  We liked it a lot, but Malinda, Ben, and Elise all said it didn't compare to the best chowdah we got at Faneuil Hall in Boston last year.

Since our hotel had a pool and the hotel Jody & Sarah stayed at didn't, we invited them over for a swim visit just before bed.