Oregon Coast Road Trip

Oh, how I LOVED this trip.  Having broken in the motorhome by taking it to Ketchum and learning the ropes there, we were ready to take it further and let the kids come along too.  Our friend, Ben, lives in Lincoln City along the Oregon coast.  He moved there a couple years ago, shortly after Todd had the privilege of baptizing him as he was Ben's wife, Debbie's home teacher.  We were so excited to get to spend some time that weekend with them.

Ben actually manages the parks and rec. district there.  He had the scoop on EVERYTHING you could do there and tips and trivia, and it made such a breeze of a trip.  He helped us pick out and reserve a spot in a very convenient RV park- closest to the Kite Festival beach.  And Kite Festival was going on the weekend we came (so fun!).  We had not just great weather, but miracle weather.  Even in beautiful warm climates of the world, I've never been on a beach without at least a breeze.  We barely got to have a kite festival because there wasn't much wind up high either.  But down low.... even at night... NO BREEZE.  It was like being in a house, in a still room with a cd of ocean noises playing in the background to put you to sleep.  It was GORGEOUS. 

We saw lots of ships and several whales at Depoe Bay.  I'm pretty sure the little splotches off in the distance are just ships, but I may have caught a whale spouting to the left of Brielle's head in the photo below.

We had clam chowder at 3 different restaurants in the area.  We had planned to cook in the motorhome but all the clam chowder calling us from every corner was more than we could take.

Prize box.

The visitor's center at Yaquina Head Lighthouse.

Walking to Yaquina Head Lighthouse.

Sea Lions!

One of my favorite pics:

Being on a rocky beach had my kids itching to hit a regular sandy beach.  So we found one before heading to dinner.

You can see how excited they were...  This is Lainey shouting, "SAND!!!)

I had been dying to get my camera out to a beach like this where wind was low and the water looked glassy on the shore.  It gives people mirror reflections and it was every bit as fun to take pictures of as I'd imagined. 

The girls chose little plastic balls from the prize box so that they could throw them out into the ocean and let the waves bring the balls back to them.  They loved playing that and seeing whose ball came back first/last.

Ashton's robot drawing.

Playing with the birds.

Writing her name.

This is Ben and his wife, Debbie, and her son.  Ben told us stories by the fire and taught the kids a ton about the ocean, animals, tides, it was awesome.

This was the calmest night ever.  I've never felt anything like it with no breeze and feeling warm at night on the Northern Pacific coast in OCTOBER.

The next day was the kite festival.  That was a great time for the kids.  They gave prizes based on how many autographs kids got from the various professional kite flyers in the area.  We were told there was a minimum of $20,000 worth of kites up in the sky, and that was before some of the biggest ones were launched.  They really struggled at first without there being wind.  High enough up there was wind.  And later in the afternoon they had sufficient.  But it did start later than usual because of it.  I didn't mind because it meant we hadn't missed anything when we got there around 9:00/10:00.  I'm not a huge morning person!  Anyway, the kids also enjoyed a race, making their own kite, and coloring, all free.  We also bought some scrumptious elephant ears there.

Synchronized kite flying (to music).

This is the race they call the "Running of the Bols".  I'm told it is harder than it looks.  The strap on a parachute/disk-like kite and run down the beach with it.  Each kite was hooked up to two people.  I was taking pictures of the kites around the area while the kids were in line for face painting with Todd.  I had no idea that they decided the line was taking too long and instead volunteered to be in the Running of the Bols race.  So when I saw a race going on and took a picture of it, I didn't know I was capturing my own children!  Glad I did or I wouldn't have gotten a shot of something so fun that they did!  Brielle and Ashton's team won with Debbie and Lainey close behind them.

We ate lunch with our friends and of course had clam chowder - this being Ben's favorite place for chowder and he would know living there.  It was delish!

Ben and Debbie took us to a Lincoln City history museum.

And they showed us how glass blowing works.

We stopped at the local candy store and everyone got a treat.  We also tried this shop's famous caramel AND cheese popcorn.  It was actually really good.  As in... I ate a huge bag almost completely by myself.

A couple of these pics look wildly edited- I used them for my photography class where I was supposed to edit a few pics that way.  They were supposed to mimic similar pictures taken by professional photographers who had unique styles. Like this one:

Another of my favorite pics.  I just love Debbie.  She is a photography hobbiest and she actually helped find me a nice beach to take sunset pictures of and showed me where to set up, etc.  Super nice of her!

Another unique editing style for school:

On our drive home we stopped for lunch with my bestie from high school, Steph.  Brielle loves getting to see their daughter her same age, Tori.  They made us such a nice meal!  Mark is the family chef and he has some mad skilz.  It was great to be able to see them- they weren't able to join us at the beach so we were grateful to get to stop and visit them in their lovely home.