Oregon Coast

Beach Escape

Posted by Lisa Eirene

I’m not sure what the weather is like in your neck of the woods, and maybe you’ve seen the news, but Portland has been basically on fire for the last week! And this coming week is going to stay in the mid-90’s! Talk about a hot summer!

Well last week Portland broke some records with a heat wave. At one point they were predicting 109 degrees and I’m not actually sure if it ever got quite that hot, but it was at least 105 at our house for three days straight. Friday arrived and we were so thankful that our friends invited us to spend the weekend at the beach with them!!! We were supposed to go a few weeks ago, but something came up and they had to reschedule. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise because the weekend we rescheduled it to was hot as hell and at the beach it was perfect–70 degrees and lovely. Michael and I both got off work a little early on Friday and packed up the car, then picked up Logan and we headed to the coast! We were expecting a mass exodus from the city to cooler temperatures and were fully prepared for the usual 90 minute drive to take 3 hours. We were kind of leaving during rush hour traffic on a Friday. But, we somehow lucked out. The worst traffic was trying to get through downtown and once we passed the zoo, it was smooth sailing. Logan took a little cat nap in the car (like for an hour) ooooops! But that ended up working out in our favor! We got to Manzanita to our friend’s house, they made a great dinner (grilled chicken and steak and baby potatoes) and we ate outside on their deck, a block from the ocean. It was getting late (it ended up taking 2 hours to drive there, so NOT three!!!) and we just relaxed a bit, then Logan went to bed (way past his bedtime) which meant he actually slept in on Saturday! WOWZA. Double lucky for us! We got to sleep in on Saturday until 7:30am. We got up, had breakfast, packed up some beach stuff and walked a block down to the beach. Logan had a blast! And so did Bella! She loves the beach. Those two pictures above were taken by our friend Christi (who is a professional photographer and who has done our newborn and 1 year old photo shoots). How funny are those poses Logan is doing? Haha! So Logan had a blast playing in the sand, watching Stu build sandcastles, and filling his bucket with sand. Then it was getting kinda past nap time so we headed back to the house to clean up and Logan took a nap. We did manage to get a few family photos for the weekend, which was nice. 🙂 I’m usually the one taking the pictures! Usually I would work out on Saturdays, and if we were on vacation somewhere I’d figure out a way to get in a workout. Either I’d go for a run or we’d go for a family hike–something. But this time I decided to take it easy. I’ve been feeling like I needed a break lately. My body has been hurting in weird ways and I’ve been feeling burned out. I haven’t been doing anything super extra-strenuous, but I’ve just been feeling like my muscles aren’t recovering like they should. So I took an extra rest day and the only “exercise” I got was hauling crap to and from the beach. 😉 It was kinda nice!!! The rest of the day was very relaxing. Instead of our usual go-go-go, we just chilled. Stu and Christ stayed at the beach for awhile and we hung out at the house while Logan took a nap. Michael made us lunch and we sat on the deck in the sunshine, listening to music and the ocean waves in the distance. i read my book a little bit, I took a nap. It was divine. A few hours later they came back and we hung out for a bit and then I took Bella to the beach, just us girls, for a little while. It was nice to hang out and just run around on the beach with my dog. The morning had been overcast but kind of warm, and then the afternoon brought sunshine and the clouds burned off. It was actually fairly warm for the beach. We grilled outside again for dinner. Michael and Stu went to the store and picked up dinner. We did some local Bratwursts and grilled up zucchini and had leftover potatoes from the night before. It was really delicious! Then we stayed up for a few hours playing cards and finally it was time for bed (for Michael and me) because we knew Logan would be up early Sunday!

Seashells by the Seashore

Posted by Lisa Eirene

On Saturday we got up early-ish and packed up the car for a day trip and headed to the Coast! We timed it perfectly and Logan had his morning nap in the car. Seaside is 90 minutes or so from Portland and it’s a pretty drive. It’s one we haven’t done in a long time. Too long.

First stop: hike. We did the Tillamook Head hike just south of Seaside. It was a little weird, we drove through a residential area and then there was a new gated community of condos and just across the street from that (at a dead end street) there was the trailhead and parking lot.

Sadly, we did not bring Bella on this day trip. I debated back and forth on it. We almost always take her on these adventures and hikes and she LOVES the beach!!!! But we planned on going out to lunch and knew we couldn’t leave her in the car while we did that, so we left her home. 🙁 I felt really guilty about it, too, but honestly it was the best move because this hike turned out to be a bit harder and not really dog/kid-friendly than we were expecting.

It was an uphill climb right from the start. It wasn’t particularly hard, per se, but it was deceptively steep. We climbed 800 feet up–which doesn’t sound like much, really, but it was especially considering that 800 feet elevation gain was in the first mile and a half. Also, the trail was really slippery. The hike is in an old growth forest with giant trees and ferns and lush greenery. It clearly rarely sees the sun and so it never dries out. It wasn’t muddy but the trail was SLIPPERY. There were lots of rocks and tree roots that were covered in invisible slime! We both slipped and almost fell a few times.

We could sort of hear the ocean off in the distance, but it wasn’t really that close and there were only small glimpses of a view.

It was a really cool trail and very peaceful and quiet. Not a lot of people on it, but we did pass a few. It was also really humid! We were very sweaty by the end of this.

We got to a part of the trail that just ended. It’s hard to see from the photo below but it’s just a drop off.

On the other side of the drop-off, there was this wall that we’d have to climb up. We decided it was a good time to turn around. I was a little worried about the descent because of how slippery the trail was, and I knew that we were going to want to turn around soon anyways to stay on a schedule for lunch and naps, etc. It turned out to be the right move. So we turned around and hiked back down the trail.

There were some “steps” on the trail that were helpful and some of the roots kind of made “stairs”, too. Michael was struggling with the baby backpack on this hike (another good reason to turn around early). We both had to look down the whole hike to watch our footing, so it was kind of a neck strain.

We got back down the trail and changed clothes, changed Logan, and packed everything up. This is the condo community right at the trailhead:

We hiked 3.5 miles in almost 90 minutes. The calorie burn was great!

For lunch we went to the Firehouse Grill in Seaside. It was a cute cafe with decent reviews online. We got there just after the lunch rush, so we got a table right away and service was pretty good. I fed Logan and he was pretty content to watching everything that was going on in the restaurant. Then our food arrived. I was famished.

I got the clam/mussel chowder and a crab cake appetizer. The chowder was pretty good, not the best, but ok. The crab cake was great! And it was topped with fresh crab meat. Logan LOVED the crab! He devoured it.

Logan had a few bites of the chowder but wasn’t really a fan. But he ate so much of the crab and crab cake. He loved it!

Michael got a burger and fries and shared some of his fries with Logan, who was sort of interested but would immediately spit out the fries to eat the crab when I offered it to him. Haha!

Next stop: THE BEACH!

It was the first time Logan has ever been to the beach, or seen sand! We had no idea how it was going to go. It had the potential to be awful but we got lucky. Logan loved it! He immediately wanted down and wanted to run on the sand. He squatted down to pick up shells and tried to eat some of them (of course!) and then he got distracted by everything else.

The bucket and shovel I got for $1.50 a few weeks ago was the best money ever spent:

He loved that bucket. I posted some videos on my Instagram if you want to check it out. 🙂

It was such a fabulous day. So perfect. Logan loved the beach. He loved running on the sand and didn’t struggle walking in the sand like we thought he would. He had a great time and it was so fun to watch him experience the beach for the first time. We will definitely be back. Soon, I hope.

It was a little after 3pm at this point and Little Man was getting tired. He threw a bit of a tantrum when it was time to go. He didn’t want to leave the beach! But we had to drive back to Portland. Logan fell asleep in the car immediately and we had an easy drive home. Home for a bath to get the sand off the little man, dinner, then bedtime. And Michael and I got to enjoy some dinner, a beer and House of Cards. 🙂