Wednesday morning we had scheduled a day at our beach. However, after getting everything ready and getting down to the beach it was really cold and rainy. Again we were the ONLY ones on the beach. I should say we were the only ones CRAZY enough to be on the beach that morning--haha! Here's the kids out by the water:
It was also misty which made for some cool pictures, but not fun to try and have a beach day with.
After about 20 minutes we called it and then decided to drive up to Astoria that day to check out the Goonies Movie sites instead. Josh was on board with that decision--haha!
Here we are rounding up the kids to leave the beach. They were cold so it didn't take too much convincing for them to leave.
We then drove straight up to Astoria. The Goonies house is really hard to get to so the best you can do is a distance shot from the road. Here's the best shot we got:
We then drove by the 'Museum' in the Goonies where the main character's Dad worked:
Here's the 'Jail' where the inmate escaped from, but has been turned into a modern day Film Museum:
This marker is outside the Film Museum:
After driving around Astoria and seeing the sites we decided to drive over the very steep, interesting, but scary Astoria-Megler bridge into Washington State.
The pictures don't do the bridge justice. It was super steep and across a long span of water.
Well we made it across. Originally we had wanted to visit Seattle for the last two days of our trip, but Seattle was going a bit crazy with CHOP/CHAZ, protests or whatever you wanted to call it so we decided not to visit. However, I had never been to Washington State and wanted to at least say I had been there. I have had a long time goal of trying to visit all the states. I have never been to Washington or Oregon so this trip was able to check off those states. I only have 9 more states to visit until I have visited them all. Aaron and I compared our state travel maps. Here's mine with only 9 more states (the ones in white) left to visit until I can mark off that goal:
Aaron only have 5 more states to visit until he can check off his goal, too:
That's why I really wanted to at least try to see a bit of Washington State even if we didn't make to crazy town aka Seattle. Wahoo the Washington State welcome sign:
We decided to picnic at a park, but it was freezing so we stayed by the car and ate our lunch. Not the most flattering picture of me, but proof we did picnic in Washington State. All of us still wearing our beach clothes from our thwarted day at Oceanside beach.
On the way back to Oceanside we stopped by Cannon Beach. This is a pretty popular beach. It has the infamous Haystack Rock from the last part of the Goonies movie. Despite it still being a bit rainy and chilly we still stopped by to check it out.
It was a gorgeous beach, but quite busy despite the lousy weather.
The kids had fun playing and burying each other in the sand:
We did some metal detecting, but didn't find too much just a few bottle caps.
Aaron and I took a walk around the beach mostly to get away from our arguing kids for a few minutes--haha! Haystack Rock:
It was cold so we pulled out the sweatshirts:
Matthew really hates being cold, hates the wind and hates the beach. He did not enjoy our time at Cannon Beach--poor guy!
You could see the old Tillamook Lighthouse off the Beach which was pretty cool:
When it was time to leave Cannon Beach the kids were all sandy. Aaron was mean and made them wash themselves off in the freezing ocean water--haha!
They didn't get all the sand off in that first round so Aaron made them get back in again to get the rest of the sand off. The kids weren't to happy about that, but it really wasn't that bad:
We then drove back to our Airbnb and started dinner for the kids. Once that was done Aaron and I snuck out to local restaurant. I am a sucker for fresh clam chowder and fish and chips.
It was a nice meal with great scenery--we were right on Netarts bay.
When we got back to our Airbnb the kids let us know that someone who shall remain nameless had hopelessly clogged the downstairs toilet and it wouldn't flush without overflowing everywhere. Ugh! The cell phone service in that area was horrible so they couldn't call us while we were out. That was not a fun thing to come back from a nice dinner to. Anyway, Matthew was freaking out about it so we didn't want to have to call the Airbnb host to wait for whenever he could come and fix it because, again, Matthew was freaking out about it. Aaron tried using the plunger a few times and that did absolutely nothing to unclog the toilet. Aaron then wanted to try getting a toilet auger to see if that would clear the toilet before we had to call the host. It was about 10 pm at this point and we were 20 minutes away from any store. We drove into Tillamook and got there 20 minutes before Fred Meyer closed--the hardware store had already closed so that was the only store left open. Not all heroes wear capes--some heroes just carry newly purchased toilet augers out of the store at 10:30 pm at night to save a freaking out kid back at the Airbnb--haha!
I am embarrassed to say this isn't the first time a kid has hopelessly clogged a toilet on a family vacation so this experience isn't new--haha! Maybe we need to get our kids plumbing checked--haha! Also we should consider adding a plunger and toilet auger on our packing list for any family trip from now on--Sigh--haha! Anyway, Aaron was able to clear it somewhat--enough that it could flush. However, the flush was not strong enough to take away all the 'sediment' from the clog, but what can you do?! That 'sediment' ended up not ever making it down the toilet the rest of the time we were at the Airbnb no matter how many times you flushed the toilet. Gross! Let's just say meatballs no longer sounded too appetizing to any of the kids if you get what I mean--haha! Ewwwww! I was glad there were two bathrooms in our Airbnb at that point.
Anyway the next morning we had an appointment to go whale watching down in Depoe Bay. This was the main thing Aaron was so excited about doing on our whole trip. On the way down to Depoe Bay we stopped by Kiwanda Cape to check out the tide pools. They weren't necessarily tide pools per se, but tide walls. When the tide goes out it leaves behind stone walls covered with muscles, crab, starfish, anemones, etc. They were really cool to look at:
We even found a huge crab wandering around:
There was a cave you could walk back into to which was pretty cool:
It was really pretty here.
The beach close by was beautiful as well:
We didn't stay for too long before we had to get back int he car to keep driving down to Depoe Bay for our whale watching time. We drove for about another hour when Aaron noticed he had a voicemail. Have I mentioned cell service in this whole area was horrible?! Anyway, I guess the Whale Watching people had unfortunately cancelled our tour because the water was way too choppy and the weather was going to be iffy. Aaron was so bummed. I felt bad for him. That was the one thing he was so excited about. Anyway, we now had a few hours to kill so we decided to stop by some tide pools and beach we were close by. Here was the beautiful beach:
The tide pools were full of critters. There were quite a few hermit crabs:
Baby crab:
We then got back in the car decided to check out Devil's Punchbowl. It is thought it was created by two caves originally carved out by the ocean that had collapsed. It was really huge, but cool:
Here's the view from the south side of Devil's Punchbowl:
North side of Devil's Punchbowl:
The beach next to and below Devil's Punchbowl:
We then stopped by some more tide pools because I found them really fascinating and fun to check out. Josh was my tide pool buddy. The rest of the kids lost interest in them after about 30 minutes, but I was still intrigued and so was Josh.
After a picnic lunch we headed back. I thought Cape Kiwanda so cool that morning I wanted to take some more time to check it out. However, by the time we got back there high tide had come in and completely covered the tide 'walls'. Here's the cave we all crawled in that morning, but it was full of water at this time.
We still walked along the beach, though:
Poor Aaron didn't want to wear his post ankle surgery walking boot on the beach and get sand all over in it so he didn't end up wearing it a lot of our trip. By the end of the week his ankle was quite painful and swollen by the end of each day. He did try taping his ankle, but sand and ocean water make the tape come off after a little while. Here you can see his left ankle is super swollen compared to his right:
When we finally made it back to the Airbnb we had a family poker night. Matthew went to bed because he was tired, but the rest of played. I am surprised how easily my kids can raise the pot, but be bluffing--haha!
It was a great day even if the whale watching trip got cancelled.
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