Oregon Coast Trip - Days 4-7 - The Coast

We arrived at our vacation rental, in Pacific City, on Sunday afternoon. We decided to check and see if we could get in a couple of hours early. We were relieved to have the door open for us. We unloaded our car and got settled. We ate our car snacks and the rest of our donuts for lunch. Alyssa helped me with a grocery run which we could not avoid doing on Sunday. It's just the way the days worked out. Our house was the perfect size for our family and everyone was SOOO happy to be able to spread out a little more than our hotel rooms had allowed so far. There were also games and toys in the house.

Everyone loved having a hot tub in the backyard. We enjoyed it so much that we are considering putting one in our own backyard.

After the house was equipped with groceries, and we had eaten, we took a walk to the beach. 

Out of all of the beaches we visited during this trip, we liked this beach the best. It had soft sand, our very own haystack rock(probably called something else here), big sandy hills to run down and it was only about a 1/4 mile walk to get there. We were there a little early for sunset, so we made plans to return the following night closer to sunset so we could watch the sun set over the ocean. We didn't time it right, because Alyssa also wanted to run down the huge sand hill and we didn't think she would have time to do that and see the sun set. So we split up and I ran with her over to the sand hill while the others sat on the beach to wait for sunset.

She made it to the top of the sand hill, ran down and then we ran back up to watch the sunset. This was our view.

And here was the view that Danny and the other three kids had.

We stuck around a little while after sunset to tack some fun pictures.

We tried to get a jumping one, but we just couldn't get the timing right. This was our best attempt out of about 6 tries.

On Monday morning, we headed down to Lincoln City. We were able to drive our car right onto the beach here and we happened to be there for low tide so we could enjoy the tide pools.

Ashley was the only one brave enough to go into the cold water, at least with her whole body. The rest of us dipped our legs in. I helped the boys build a sand castle. It was a bit breezy, so we got cold, plus we were hungry, so we only stayed at the beach for a couple of hours. 

The tide rolled in and destroyed our sand castle right before we left.

On Tuesday Morning(June 1 - Tyler's Birthday), we decided to drive up north to see some of the coastal cities there. We headed straight up to Ecola State Park. I had planned an easy 3 mile hike along the beach, but after we started the hike we learned that it was definitely NOT easy. It was steep, and long, and not what we were in the mindset to attempt(except for Alyssa). The views were pretty amazing, though.

This is Indian Beach. The sign said that "Twilight," "Point Break," and a couple of other movies that I can't remember right now were filmed here. 

There was a viewpoint to see a lighthouse out in the water along the way. 

After Ecola State Park, we headed to Cannon Beach. We were hungry and had packed a lunch in our cooler. So we hauled the cooler out onto the beach. The kids were introduced to eating food with sand while at the beach. They had not had years of practice, like Danny and I, of learning not to stick your hands in the sand while eating. It was also breezy which made eating difficult. After eating, the kids went out to the water to play(they were not in swimsuits and ended up wet and sandy). Danny took the cooler back to the car and the rest of us walked down the beach to see the famous Goonies haystack rock. There were also tide pools here, but there were nature conservationists guarding the tide pools and you could not touch anything, or even step on any rocks

After Cannon Beach, we got back in the car and continued south. Our next destination was Tilamook to tour the cheese factory, but we made a stop in the city of Wheeler on the way for a quick picture.

We also stopped to get a picture at this pull out with an amazing view of the coastline.

It was hard to convince Alyssa to get in our picture because of her fear of heights, but she did it for the 2 seconds it took to take the picture.

Tilamook was a lot of fun. We started with the self guided tour of the cheese factory and learned all about how they make cheese. The machines were pretty cool looking.

We had to wear face masks, because Oregon was still very much going through the pandemic. Alyssa was struggling with the masks and the slow moving people ahead of us, so she skipped out on the tour and got in ice cream line for us. The ice cream was really good. We also stopped in the gift shop and bought some cheese for dinner and cheese curds to try and snack on.

That night, we celebrated Tyler's birthday by eating sweet pork(his request), going in the jacuzzi, and roasting s'more's over a campfire. We also got him some of those pink frosted sugar cookies at the store(they did not have any cupcakes or cakes). They loved going in the spa, jumping out to eat a s'more, and then going back into the spa. We finally called it a night around 10:20pm.

On Wednesday, We had to pack up the car again and leave our spacious and super fun house. We had kind of a late start to our day and we were still loading up when the cleaners showed up 15 minutes after check out time. We spent the day exploring some of the highlights of the coast south of Pacific City. Our first stop was in Depoe Bay. This was supposed to be a spot where you could spot whales close to the shoreline. The day was quite foggy(more like we pictured the Oregon Coast to be-I think we were really luck with the weather we had had up to this point) so we couldn't see very far out into the water.

We walked over to the whale watching center, but it was closed, probably due to COVID, so we walked across the street to use the restroom, buy some salt water taffy, and buy some souvenir shirts, sweatshirts, toys, and jewelry. We probably should have grabbed lunch here to, since we discovered the options were lacking as we drove down the coast. We could have eaten at the Sea Hag's Restaurant...:) 

After Depoe Bay, our next stop was the Devil's Punchbowl. We didn't come at the best viewing time. I think it is most spectacular when it is high tide and sunset. We were there at low tide and in the middle of the day. 

After the Devil's Punchbowl, we headed to Yaquina Head Lighthouse National Refuge. We were glad to have our national parks pass to get us in. This was a fun stop. We started by walking out to the light house.

I don't have a picture of it, but there was this huge haystack rock in the water with hundreds of puffins on it(the penguin looking birds that fly). As we walked back to the car, we noticed a bunch of sea lions laying on the rocks below.

There were stairs that went down to some more tide pools, so we went down to explore them. These also had nature conservationists guarding them, but their rules were more relaxed than the ones at Cannon beach. They wanted us to stay off of rocks with muscles on them but we could gently touch the sea creatures. There were some pretty anemones.

And really big ones, too.

Yaquina Lighthouse was our last stop. Well, actually we made one more stop at the sea lion caves, but did not want to wait in the long line and pay the $20 entrance fee each to see them, so I just took a quick picture of the coastline and we continued on our way. 

I think this picture sums up the coastline perfectly. There were miles of sandy beaches, but there were also some very mountainous coastal areas. We would be driving through thick fog and then go inland a quarter of a mile and it would completely clear up. We were so sad to leave the coast and head inland. It was so beautiful and peaceful there. Our next destination was Sutherlin, OR.

Oregon Coast Trip - Days 3 & 4 - Portland

Our destination after finishing in the Columbia River Gorge was to pick up lunch at Jack in the Box. We knew that the dining room would not be open, so we also had to find somewhere to eat the food. I had hoped to find a Jack in the Box close to the freeway, but was unsuccessful. So then I tried to find one close to our Hotel. That put us right in the middle of downtown Portland. As our GPS was directing us, we hit traffic. Traffic that was not moving, at all. We were trying to make a right turn, but the cars on that street were not moving. So I climbed out of the car and peeked around the corner of the building and discovered a railroad crossing with a very, VERY slow moving train on it...a really long train. So we quickly changed our plan and looked up Voodoo Donuts instead. We knew we wanted to get some for the kids, so that became our new lunch plan. 

The line was about a 15 minute wait, but the kids said it was worth it.

We carried our donuts through a street market and ended up in a green space park on the river. There were a lot of people around us doing the same thing-eating their voodoo donuts in the park.

We got about 20 donuts and ended up eating them for the next 3 days. When we checked into our hotel, we discovered that we had to reserve the swimming pool and the only good time slot left was 9 pm. So we headed to a park so the kids could play while Alyssa got her tennis time. The courts were awful, and there were a lot of weird people around.  Oh, and it was really HOT. We had planned to eat dinner at a restaurant right on the river. But as we walked along the river, we soon discovered that we would need to make a new plan. The restaurants were either not family friendly, too expensive, or full. We headed back to our hotel and picked up dinner at the Jack in the Box that was ACROSS THE STREET FROM OUR HOTEL. Yes, after the trouble we had locating one for lunch, there happened to be one right next to our hotel. We enjoyed the private pool that night.

The next morning, we had another employee served breakfast. We headed for Washington Park that morning. It was packed. We were going to try the Japanese Gardens, but discovered that they cost money to enter and you had to have a reservation. So Danny dropped us off at the Rose Gardens and he drove a mile down the hill to park and then walked back to us. The gardens were pretty.

Since it was Sunday morning, we sat down and talked a little bit about what gospel messages we could see in the beauty around us. Danny was the only one that listened in on our home ward Sacrament meeting. The timing was really bad, so he listened through headphones as we walked the gardens. I had wanted to see more of Washington park, but the crowds took the fun away and we decided to head on to Pacific City, where we would be staying for the next 3 nights.
 

Oregon Coast Trip - Days 2 & 3 - The Dalles, Columbia River Gorge

On Day 2, we drove from Boise to a town on the Columbia River called The Dalles (we think they include "The" in the town name to distinguish from Dallas, Texas). This day of driving was one of our worst of the trip. We had traffic three different times because of crashes on the road. The worst traffic was right after I took over driving (I have really bad luck with hitting traffic on long trips when I drive). The 2 lane freeway came to a complete stop. After about 15 minutes, people started getting out of their cars. Then we started to notice people leaving the freeway and driving up the onramp. 30 minutes in, Danny decided to follow those other cars up the onramp. We ended up taking this detour that led us onto a dirt road through some windmills(we were following google map directions). It was a crazy caravan.

Eventually we made our way back to the freeway, feeling happy with our decision. That is, until 20 minutes later when we passed the truck pulling a trailer that was parked next to us on the freeway during the stop. We really wanted to continue believing that we had saved all of this time on our crazy detour. We pulled into our hotel an hour later than we should have, quickly headed out to the restaurant we had picked out for that evening-A Hawaiin BBQ place(because it closed at 8 and it was about 7:45). It actually allowed indoor dining, so that was nice. Tyler liked the Tiki's all over the restaurant (Camden was scared of them).

Alyssa was disappointed that the sun was close to setting by the time we finished eating. She and Danny were making plans to get up at 6 am to go to the courts in the morning, until he looked at a satellite view of the courts and saw lights. So they rushed off to the courts while I explored the pool with the other kids. Unfortunately, the lights had to be reserved ahead of time to turn on, so they only had about 20 minutes of daylight to play in. We were glad to have this day come to an end.

The next morning, after our hotel breakfast which the employees dished up for us, we explored the Columbia River Gorge. I picked out about 5 waterfall hikes that I thought were doable. The first was called Wahclella Falls. This was the perfect hike, and since we were there early-ish, it wasn't too crowded (we were there the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend) or hot. Actually, I think we were kind of cold to start. It was soooooo green and so beautiful.

I loved the deep blue-green pool that the waterfall fell into. 

After our hike, we continued on along the Columbia river. This Horsetail Falls was our next stop. The waterfall was right off of the road, so no hiking necessary. Unfortunately, no parking available either. The lot was packed. Danny dropped us off and circled in the car while we took a couple of quick pictures. I love the rainbow in the mist.

We were going to go to Multnomah Falls, too, but the parking lot and area looked like Disneyland crowds, so we continued on. We were getting tired by this point anyways. And my navigating skills were lacking a bit, so I didn't think I could successfully find the next hike on my list anyways. We decided to drive up to the lookout area we had visited the last time we were here. After a lot of frantic searching, we guessed it was called Vista House. The view was still amazing up there and we actually found a parking space.

After the stop at Vista House, we continued on towards Portland.