Oregon

Our family has a vacation spot favourite.  We visited it with Brad's family before we were married (my first time there).  And we honeymooned at the same place after our wedding.  Since then, we've been back... twice.  We hope to go a little bit more now that we have access to an R.V.

We were there last week, Cannon Beach, Oregon - a little seaside town known for it's beautiful coast and creative, residential artists.  It's very quaint and lovely, everything you'd expect in a pleasant little artsy-fartsy tourist town.  Shops are open through the weekend and take a couple of random days mid-week as their weekend.  Lots of small galleries and coffee shops.  Little boutiques catered towards shopaholic women.  No thrift stores - sad :(

We stayed in the family motorhome at one of the two r.v. resorts in the town.  That's also nice because at a place like Cannon Beach, the r.v. clientele is families and retired folks.  Hello early quiet time! haha this is most important to me.  Camping, even in a motorhome, can be an intimate affair.  If you're having a conversation outside, most people within a 10 meter radius can hear you.  If you prefer to use the porcelain throne versus the motorhome plastic can, you might have to wait for a complete stranger to finish whilst another brushes his teeth, and yet another is applying deodorant.  Personally, I prefer to use the plastic can.  You probably didn't need to know that.  But hey - we're a blog!  We're in the business of over-sharing.

It was a nice, relaxing week of sleeping, eating and doing absolutely nothing.  We drove into Seaside, another coastal town, this one a bit bigger and I personally find, not as nice as Cannon Beach, not a few times (10 minute drive).  But Seaside has big box stores (Safeway, pharmacy) and a few outlet stores.  We found some things at all these places.  We also went to the actual sea side at Seaside.  It was reminiscent of the 50's, probably its heyday.  Still quaint but definitely didn't have the same charm.

I'll post a few select pictures (courtesy of instagram) for your viewing.

We love camp fires.  Brad's finger was a casualty of this fire.  

He was chopping kindling.  And chopped his finger.

As you can see, he's feelin' alright!  Tuesday afternoons farmer's market.

We ate some delicious shwarmas and organic juice.

We bought some fresh, organic, local produce and organic steak!  Booyah.

 This is the organic goodness.  It was awesome.

I never knew that I liked lettuce until I tried organic lettuce.  

It actually has flavour - not just crunchy green leaves.

Seaside

There's this pirate joke our circle loves to tell.  It involves the British Navy.

My sister couldn't remember that detail so she'd make up that part of the joke.

This sign is exactly what she'd say in the joke. 

Seaside

Brad and I walked by this little train lot not an hour before.  We commented on how cute it was but that the oval shaped track and lack of scenery made this small train seem boring.

Evidently, the train conductor thought the ride was boring too.  Muahahahhaha. 

I got to play with Mel's dlsr.  It was my first time trying the manual setting.

Not super successful but it was fun to experiment.

This is the famous Haystack Rock.   

 More camera experimenting.  There's actually a plume of smoke down the middle, slightly left of middle, of this picture.  Someone had lit a small fire under this driftwood.

Cute sea birds.  There are bajillions of varieties of sea birds that roost along this coast, particularly on Haystack Rock.  At low tide, you can walk right to Haystack and see (and smell) their presence. 

No children photography subjects were vacationing with us, at least on the outside, so I resorted to taking pictures of strangers.  I made sure their faces weren't visible because I'm considerate like that. 

Attempt at self shot with the dslr.  hah. 

 Self portraits at the beach.

Exploring tidal pools by the base of Haystack Rock.  It was awesome!  There were tons of explorers.  Also, there are guides that assist and monitor the activity as this is a protected wildlife area. 

We had a kindly stranger help us take a photo so that we'd have one normal photo of this vacation before the arrival of little bao. 

One evening we just sat at the beach.  As you can tell, it's not overly warm.  Most of the week was overcast like this.  Tuesday and Friday afternoon were the exceptions.

For our final evening, we wandered to the part of the beach south of Haystack rock.  This area of town is less touristy in that there are fewer restaurants and almost no shops.  There are lots of hotels and vacation homes.  The sand at the beach is mixed and looks darker in some parts as you can tell in the sand castle picture.  Some social media commenters thought this sand castle looked very LOTR - mordor-ish.  I thought it was creative as I'd never think to build in this manner.

So that was a snapshot of our week away on the coast. It was most relaxing.  Upon returning, Brad had another week of holidays so he did a lot of yard work outside.  We also entertained quite a bit as we figure the purpose of our home is hospitality, since God has been so good to us.  If you click on my twitter feed on the right hand side, you can see bits of our activity from the past week at home.