I've had a great week in Oregon! First, I got the awesome chance to visit my good friend Carrie, who moved from Wyoming to Oregon last year. She lives in Albany, only an hour from the coast so Thursday, the kids (all four!) took a day off school and we drove over for a day at the ocean. It was awesome! The Oregon coast is still much like it was when I saw it as a kid almost 30 years ago. Amazing how well-preserved and undeveloped it remains.
After purchasing the best strawberries I've ever had in my life (and eating a good share of them), we visited a lighthouse in NewPort Beach. It is the tallest lighthouse in Oregon. We actually got to go inside and climb 110 stairs to the top. I was amazed at how small the bulbs are (like 6 inches) but they are so magnified by many glass panels that they can be seen 19 miles out from shore!
The beach is made up of these round black stones which are lava smoothed from the tides. It is so strange to walk on this beach because it makes a weird echoey vibrating noise when you step on them. We got to see seals and sea lions. The seals were so playful and were fascinated by Carrie's kids on the beach. They kept swimming closer and closer, trying to get a good look and maybe hoping to play. Their beady eyes bobbed up and down in the waves and they got within about 20 feet of us!
Next we drove to Lincoln Beach and ate lunch at Mo's. The food was excellent and the atmosphere fun for the kids. We ended the adventure by stopping at a beach to walk off our lunch. There were no homes and practically no people on the whole stretch of miles of beach. It was wild, exhilarating, and so beautiful! The kids were adorable, playing in the surf, not caring about how wet or cold they got. I remember what it was like but you won't get me into much cold water these days.
The next day, I left Carrie's and made the trip to Sisters, Oregon for business. It was such a beautiful trip and I stopped at a tranquil campground on a river to have some prayer time. Rivers are one of my favorites, especially the mountain variety. In the Bible, it talks about God's voice being like rushing waters, and I like to sit there, praying and imaging that the water is God's voice speaking back to me. Of course, don't let this information get out to the state mental hospital or they might be trying to track me down.
I had a wonderful time in Sisters, and the mountain climate and landscape there is really restful. It is a small town near three snowcapped mountains called "the three sisters," and the town looks a lot like Jackson Hole, Wyoming—very quaint, posh, and western.
Tonight I am back to Portland where I met up with my husband and some friends who are all at a techno-geek conference…er, um I mean a web design conference. Frankly, there are a few too many brain cells floating around this hotel for me. Monday we head back to Wildoming.
I hope you enjoy the pictures from my mini-adventure!