Beach Trip - Girls only!

A few weeks ago Barb took me and Carus (and Yoda) to the beach for a girls only beach day.

It was gorgeous! We stopped in Tillamook at the Tillamook Cheese Factory and we perused their gift store while eating some really good ice cream.  Then we went down to Lincoln City to walk along the beach for a bit before grabbing a late lunch/early dinner and heading home.  It was a really lovely day.  Thanks for taking us, Barb!

Go here to see the rest of the photos.

Beach day

We haven't gone to the beach at all this summer so thought we'd remedy that Sunday.  It was hot here - in the 90s - and was supposed to be in the 70s at the beach.



Notice I said "supposed to be".  Yeah.  It was sunny and hot up until that final set of hills where we saw low clouds.  Unfortunately, it was full on fog and the temp dropped to a lovely 72 and continued to fall.



It was 60 and foggy on the beach.  The kids and Robert walked up and down the beach a bit, while I sat on a blanket and read.  My ankle has been doing well as long as I don't push things and I knew that if I did a lot of walking in the soft, dry uneven sand or on the wet compacted sand it would be hurting bad by the end of the day.  Plus it was nice to spend some time with my book.



216/365 - Robert brought me back a heart-shaped rock from their walk.



I was visited by a seagull.  He was either wondering if my book was good, or if I had any food.




After their walk Adam and Carus spent some time digging a hole in the sand.  Robert helped by pushing sand into their hole for them to dig out.

I didn't take my big camera as I didn't want to get it all sandy and I thought it would be a nice break from worrying about getting a photo.

I had my cell phone, and Instagram to share with, though.

I hope we have the chance to go back to the beach before the end of the summer, or if we can't/don't make it, I hope next year is filled with many more beach trips.

Our favorite beach

Sunday we did go to the coast for the day to enjoy the surf and sun and have a picnic lunch.  We went to our favorite beach, Arcadia Beach, which is just a few miles south of Cannon Beach on Highway 101.



It was still a bit foggy when we first got there...


But it didn't take long to start burning off.


Leia enjoyed herself, but I can't wait until she has all her leash manners. The whole jumping on me and yanking herself in every direction got old quite fast. 


I love Adam's sense of humor, even when he is driving me batty with his sarcastic and smart-alec remarks to me.
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Lunch time!


View from the parking lot at the top of the trail down to the beach, looking south.


Since Yoda is such a momma's boy and doesn't wander far from me and I can call him back when he tries to go say hi to people, he gets to be lucky enough to be off leash.  He loves when the kids run ahead of me and he will run to them until he touches one of them or circles in front of them and then run back to me.  One downside to him being friendly was some guy was trying to coax him into following him home. Not joking around either, he was seriously walking away from me calling Yoda. 




206/365 - Jumping over the waves.  When did my baby boy grow up?!












Seagull floating on the waves.


My baby doll, who is also growing up way too fast...


Adam running with Leia - he was having a bit of a time keeping her from jumping on him.


Floppy puppy happy to be on the beach.

Crabs!

A couple of weekends ago we packed us a lunch and headed to the beach for the day.  We went to Cape Meares. Its a small, secluded, not at all busy beach. 


It was foggy when we got there, but still warm and enjoyable.  As always, the water was FREEZING, but that never stops the kids from wading in it a bit. 

After walking a bit we found a stop to sit and chill.  The kids played in the sand for awhile and we ate.  Then we walked back down the beach the way we came. 

The fog was starting to burn off a bit. We ended up stopping again near a little stream that fed into the ocean and the kids and I started to build a dam.  Pretty soon we were all building a dam, and were having some fun. Dam dam dam dam


The kids were having tons of fun saying DAM over and over and over. We're building a DAM! Damn dam. HA!


We encourage that kind of maturity.

You should see how we handle the word FART around here.


Then Carus screamed "Eeeek, a scorpian!" And when I looked my first thought was, I don't think it's alive, it is underwater.  But after another look we thought it was a lobster or crawdad.  A baby one. They kept it in the dam, and I ran back to the car for the camera which Robert had taken back up after lunch.

I think lobster, because I think the stream was salt water (I think) and crawdads aren't in saltwater....right?  I've never seen one so???


That's Robert's hand - see how tiny it is.

Robert decided it was a lobster because of the shape of it's tail.


LOBSTER ON A STICK! (If you've seen Jeff Dunham, you'll totally get that.)

From what I can find online - I am really not sure.  I'm still leaning towards lobster but??? No not lobster butt. That's just gross. Or maybe it's good, dunno, never had lobster butt.



Oh, and we did release it back into the wild - don't know if a fishy or birdy got it; but we released it still alive and kicking.