Oregon Coast 2014

14-17 Aug 2014

Found art on the beach

C.J.'s girlhood friend, Paula, again invited us to spend a few days with her family at their rented house near Waldport on the Oregon Coast. It has always been fun to interact with such a close-knit family. Three generations include the grandson, Sylvan, now almost eight, two daughters, Courtney and Heather, Sylvan's mom, and the grandparents (our generation!) Paula and Stephen, and Paula's older sister, Bobbi. Heather's husband Ryan joined us on the weekend.

14 Aug, Thu - We said goodbye to Ginny and Wally and hit the road about 0930. Gassed up at Costco Tumwater (   ) and made close to 30 mpg the rest of the way down I-5 and along the Tigard-Dayton-Lincoln City route to the coast. We stopped in Newport to pick up an order of rockfish at Local Ocean (They were out of fresh tuna). And we got to the house on Surf Pine Lane close to 1600. After a walk along Wakonda Beach Stephen and I used the new Weber charcoal grill to cook the fish for a great dinner. Earlier we got to watch a beach wedding from the second floor windows. And later Heather got the campfire going and everybody made s'mores, some with her high-quality chocolate.

Huge and difficult jigsaw puzzle provided hand-eye coordination practice

Hot air balloon

15 Aug, Fri - Stephen cooked up a batch of scrambled eggs and bacon. C.J.'s cream cheese blueberry muffins were a big hit. In the afternoon I walked up the beach, crossing the shallow Little Creek, as far as the Gov. Patterson State Park. I climbed up the bluff to the highway and walked in the shade of the wind-sculpted conifers to the next trail leading back to the beach. It was about a two-mile round trip not counting detours to view the Big Stump (ca.1500 yrs old) and three homemade garbage-bag hot air balloons. The expert cook staff whipped up an excellent dinner of spaghetti.

View from Cape Perpetua lookout

16 Aug, Sat - After a blueberry pancake breakfast made using Snoqualmie Falls Lodge batter, we headed down to Cape Perpetua, nine of us in two cars. We drove up to the trailhead for the high viewpoint and walked out to the Stone Shelter, a CCC project. An artist-in-residence program gave youngsters a chance

Sylvan captures the scene in oil

to create their own oil painting. Sylvan seemed to enjoy drawing the ocean-sky-cliffs complete with a red paraglider (although we did not see anyone flying from the old takeoff). We all returned to the cars and drove the two miles back down to Hwy 101 where we parked in a pullout and carried our sandwiches down to the sandy/rocky beach. There was lots of dry driftwood to sit on, but we needed to put on jackets as the wind had picked up. Afterwards we explored the tide pools and a retaining wall placed to keep an old Indian midden from eroding. On the way back to the beach house we stopped to pick up albacore tuna from the fish store/restaurant in Yachats. Back at the house Ryan got out a kite just like my parafoil so we went out to fly them on the beach. The wind was almost straight down the shoreline from the north and just the right speed. Sylvan tried his hand at controlling the kite, but he did better when his dad helped him. Later most of the group went for a walk on the beach while Paula and I pitched a light ball to Sylvan who got some good hits with his plastic bat. Sylvan had had a busy day and was pretty tired by dinnertime. Stephen and I grilled the tuna (thick triangular-prism-shaped pieces) on a hot fire for 10 min per side; they were a bit drier than when we've had ahi previously. But dinner was excellent as always.

17 Aug, Sun - The last of the blueberries (and we had started the trip off with a bunch of them, some from us and more from Heather) went into and on the oatmeal for breakfast. There were enough muffins left over (hidden in a box in our cooler) for each of us to have a half of one. Then it was time to take the group photos and say goodbye for another year (two years, actually, since the Goldmans are doing the trip to Oregon only every second year.) We had hoped to be on the road by 1000 but it was closer to 1100 when we left. This time we turned east on SR 34 and followed the Alsea River through the Coast Range to Corvallis and back to I-5. We stopped for gas and a Costco lunch at Wilsonville and took I-205 around Portland after checking traffic on Google Map. We ran into slow going through Chehalis-Centralia and from Olympia to past JBLM. So we didn't get home until after 1900. Fortunately C.J. had left an already-prepared zucchini boat in the refrigerator. Lots more zucchinis are ripening in the garden and the blueberries are not all picked yet. We're going to have a bumper crop of plums soon and the pears are dragging down the limbs. Even the tomatoes are looking good, along with the beans.