Oregon Coast Aquarium

The Oregon Coast Aquarium was pretty nifty. You wound your way inside and outside through different exhibits. I really liked the way it was laid out.

It had the expected touching pool, but a little intimidating since not only did they have sea stars, a.k.a. starfish, but other spiky things. Seeing this and getting a text from a teammate made James very focused on finding real tidal pools. Easy enough since there is a lot of rocky coastline except you have to be there at low tide. That started a day of trying to time arrival at some rocky coastline at low tide. You have to keep following the trip to find out if we made it. (Hint: Some of my favorite pictures came from that quest.)

This was a pretty cool exhibit. I should stop and ponder sometime why the jellyfish (or is it sea jellies?) are always my favorite exhibit. They're always so pretty.

The cool thing here were the multiple tunnels where the fish were all around you. Made me dizzy looking at them, but very, very neat. Christopher took it all in...he just loves animals and watching them.

No words to do it justice. (I know hard to believe.)

Oh, wait. They weren't an exhibit. Nice smile from James who says he doesn't really know how to smile for pictures.

If you ever get to the Oregon coast, you should definitely make time to see this aquarium. Worth every minute (and dollar).

Structural Sights

Ok, I promised lighthouses and you will get lighthouses, but I also included some other architectural/structural sights. There's a ton more on the site, but maybe this gives you a flavor of the kinds of things we saw.

Sandy Creek covered bridge. Also, the site of a few Todd races from the car, down the path, across the bridge and a bit further on the path on the other side. Until there was a dispute about exactly where the finish line was. Still, it was nice to get out of the car and stretch our legs.

Staircase at Yaquina Head. Intimidating. There could only be a few people at the top at once so we had to stand in line. Long enough for those of us afraid of heights could get ready anxious.

By the top, he was very anxious. This pic is actually on the way down when he was not so focused on the steps that he could stage a pose.

Survive was about right.

Yaquina Head...the view from outside.

Could just eat them up. Don't they just look the most loving brothers?

Yaquina Bay.

Christopher was very particular about getting this picture exactly the way he wanted it.

Love pictures with me and my little men.

Umpqua Lighthouse

Oregon Coastline. Nice shot by Keith.

Heceta Head. I originally thought I would put a bit about each one, but honestly, I don't remember. They all started running together. Neat nonetheless.

Next stop will be the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. I think you'll like that stop.

Back to Vacation - the DUNES

I found another "to do" as I was pulling pictures for this post. I apparently haven't downloaded the pictures from my point and shoot camera because I just have a few up on candisnaps. I consciously only took a few with my "good" camera because the sand was blowing everywhere because we were on.....

the DUNES. This was the part of the trip that actually enticed Christopher to want to come. Keith had gone to them on our honeymoon and one other trip. They really are fun - roughly 200 foot high sand dunes that you can romp and play in. He had high expectations.

It's really hard to explain trying to walk in sand that you literally sink into up to your knees on one side of the dune, but then the other side is firm. These guys would roll down the dune and then fight their way back up. Fortunately for all of us, the dunes met expectations and maybe even exceeded them although I'm not sure we would ever get this concession.

It was just plain fun rolling, playing, sliding.

There was one area that was slighly more marshy as you got closer to the actual coastline. I assume they had had some rain because I don't remember this much moisture from my previous trips; it made some kind of neat little pools of water.

We had a good time just tromping through the water. It was hard to be ready to go, and the hike back to the car of roughly half a mile was pretty brutal. The hike in was fairly shady, but we decided to go back the other way. Not so shady. Long story short about halfway to the car, James realized he didn't have a prized key that he uses to help himself focus before a race. So....guess who treks back with him. Remarkably we found it on the path amidst all that sand. (Needless to say, the two of us opted to go back the shady way.) Some good mother-son bonding time.

Next stop lighthouses.

On to Crater Lake

Our first afternoon we made it to Crater Lake. It was a nice change after being in the museum for hours and then the car for a while.

The guys were quite excited to see SNOW! So excited, that they forgot to adjust their clothing. Of course, Da (my mom) would saying wearing flip flops in the snow is purely genetics.

We quickly made adjustments and we were ready to play.

Of course, I had to snap the official photos first. I appreciate that both guys were happy to pose. Even my almost teenager. He's looking pretty handsome here if you can get past those socks....I must explain those. Those are compression socks. About four weeks worth of allowance, but he swears by them. Maybe I should get a pair...nah, not for four weeks worth of allowance.

Did I mention they just loved the snow? It was kind of wet, but it wasn't that cold so they were really able to enjoy it.

I took a bunch of pictures in front of this bank and in almost every one of them one of the guys is jumping on, digging in or just generally unable to keep his hands off it. Kind of funny to me.

I think being able to climb on it was the best. It took a bit of cajoling to get them to come down....but come down they had to because the best was yet to come.

The big payoff was Wizard Island. This is a volcano that collapsed many years ago. It was huge...bigger than the surrounding ones, i.e., St. Helens, Hood, Ranier, etc, etc. When the crater fell in on itself a lake formed. Some of the purest water in the world is in Crater Lake. Very slowing, a new lava dome has formed which we know as Wizard Island. The is another dome beside it, but it is currently submerged.

The colors are so incredibly vivid. The greens of the trees against the white snow and the blue water...it's nearly breathtaking. I mean literally. It's beautiful. If you can see a sight like this and not believe there's a Creator, then I feel really sorry for you 'cause something is wrong.

We made our way down to an observation deck to get a little closer. Unbelievable.

The water is so blue and so clear. They stocked it with fish a few decades ago. I bet those are some mighty delicious fish.

One last snow visit before we left. They were trying to write their names in the snow. I didn't have the heart to tell them it would likely be gone to next day as fast as the snow seemed to be melting.

That night we made it to Roseburg, OR or about halfway to the coast. The Dunes were next. That was cool...stay tuned!

High Desert Museum, Bend

As we left Bend on Saturday to head for Crater Lake, we stopped at the High Desert Museum south of town. Bend is in the high desert so it's cool and very dry. The fauna and flora are quite different from what we were accustomed to. It's history was a bit different from our heritage here. This was part of the rough and tumble wild west.

The museum came highly recommended and it didn't disappoint.

It had all kind of interesting artifacts....like old stage wagons. (Christopher was coming down with a cold so he took my sweatshirt and his eyes were starting to show, but he still took in every bit of this museum.) This one was a little worse for the wear, but neat nonetheless. They had Indian history and settlement history. One section was a replica of a traveling "town" that accompanied the train as it was being built. They would lay sections of track and then move the town to the new edge of the tracks. There was a saloon, wagon of ill repute, etc. Very interesting.

Outside they had several structures along with an exhibition of some desert animals. We got to see this very cute baby porcupine, an owl, and badger. The structures included what you would see in an old homestead....a home, barn, smokehouse, outhouse, and garden. Further along the path, there was a small sawmill that was no longer in operation. All very fun.

Along the way were people who "lived in the era." (No, none of the ladies of ill repute, but the bartender was there.) At the house there was the traveling teacher who lived 40 miles away. She tried to get there as often as she could, but it took her two full days of wagon travel (one way) to come teach so she didn't make it very often. She was tutoring the children in handwriting, drilling them on their sums and teaching lessons from the McGuffy Reader she had.

In a turn from normal events, Christopher was quite the willing student and James would only look on from afar. Christopher wrote on the slate and he tried the quill pen. Did a mighty fine job. (Ok, that could be because the ink piece he did said CBT loves his mom, but it was very, very neat with no smears.)

It was hard to move on to the next thing because everything was so interesting, but move on we did because once they were done with their lessons they had to do chores.

The chore of the moment was pumping water for the tub so big sister could wash the clothes....the old fashioned way with a washboard. It took several buckets so several children got to participate. The older children got to participate more so James had to fill his totally to the top while Christopher only had to fill it halfway.

It was quite a bit of work to get that bucket full. "Big sister" recognized their hard work and told them she would teach them a new game and they could play a bit before needing to do something else.

It took a bit of coordination. (James, you should thank me for not including a picture of you. I didn't have any that were really flattering.)

Not entirely sure how Keith got to play since he didn't pump any water.....

Our next step was panning for gold. Christopher found a ton of pyrite and was very, very angry when he found out that it wasn't gold. He couldn't get over the fact that someone would lie to him.

It was still fun (and educational) even if it was pyrite. I always have such new appreciation for our technology and finer things when I go to one of these museums. Even thinking about how seldom they were able to communicate with their family back east makes me grateful for what we have. How hard that must have been for the young brides.

There was so much more, but I don't want to bore you. For those of you who know how much Christopher loves to catch lizards, you guessed it. On our way to the car, he saw one and was determined to catch it. I had to make him leave because our next stop is Crater Lake and we wanted to have time to enjoy it.

Snapshots from Around the Race

One of the side trips we made while we were in Bend was to Tumalo Falls. (In case you are ever looking for Tumalo Falls, do NOT rely on your GPS. And, by the way, do NOT rely on your state map.) After a couple of misfires, we finally figured out that Tumalo Falls was not in Tumalo State Park (who knew?) and that is was on virtually the opposite end of Bend. Actually, very near where the races were. Oh, well. We did get to see some scenery we hadn't seen.

After driving about 15 miles and then 2.5 miles on a gravel road, we found this.

It was absolutely beautiful....and loud. It was tucked away and couldn't be seen until you got right up to it.

One thing about this trip that I really appreciated was how much the guys appreciated the beauty that was all around us. Christopher especially enjoyed being outside and at times decided Oregon was a place he could live.

Because of our side trip, we got there as most everyone else was leaving. Rumor has it that these girls decided they needed to stay longer when James showed up. Coach Kelli is in the back holding Baden.

We walked to the top of the falls and then followed the river back a ways. We found a place that we could go down and touch the water. It was the coldest water Christopher had ever touched. Didn't matter. He still had to kneel down in it. It was a pretty cool place.

This was the view as we left. We didn't notice it as well when we were driving in, but couldn't help but see it as we left. Gorgeous.

Next post is the day we spent at the High Desert Museum.