Trip to the Oregon coast

I love water; any bodies of water.   I love rain, streams, creeks, waterfalls, rivers, lakes and the ocean.  I feel at home when I am near by the water. If I lived in the Avatar world I am pretty sure I would belong to the water tribe.

Our family loves taking a trip to the Oregon coast for a few reasons.  It takes about 12 hours by car, including lunch breaks and a little sight seeing on our way.  We love long drives; we use it as time to reconnect as a family.  As our children get older and busy with jobs and schools we don't see them often as we would like to.  We love sea foods and it is hard to get good fresh sea food where we live. So, yes, we do travel for food.  We love not having a schedule so we can relax and enjoy each others company.     


This is the view from the Vista House.  We took the historic highway along the Columbia Gorge to enjoy the waterfalls.  At the end of the historic highway there is a cute little town called Troutdale and they have a really good Italian restaurant.  Did I say we travel for food?  

After our lunch stop we drove through Portland.  The traffic was so bad It was more like crawling than driving.  But I was able to take a picture of the Portland temple while we were stuck in the traffic so that made it all better.
  

We had a really good dinner by the ocean and while we were driving we saw this light house.  This was the first time I actually saw a light house at work so that was very cool.  

The next morning we went on a hike to the beach. It was about 5 miles round trip.  The trees were beautiful and green, plenty of wild flowers.  But when we got there all we could see was a sand hill in front of the ocean.  We were a little bit disappointed but it was still a lovey hike.

Time to play.  The water was cold and it was a little windy but that didn't stop us.

We saw about 5 whales hanging out by the tide pools.  It was a very successful, unexpected whale watching.  A few years ago we went on a whale watching boat with a local company and only thing we saw was a black shadow for a few seconds.  They said it was a whale but I wasn't sure if it actually was.

It is always fun to check out the tide pools.

Sunset.  It was so cold and windy we had to wait in the car while waiting for the sunset.  In the end we send Mike and Rhiannon (our photographer) out to take some picture for us.
She did an amazing job.