July 30, 2010, Friday TILLAMOOK, OR

Well today we pulled up stakes in Newport and headed for Tillamook. It’s funny, it’s really foggy here (as you can see) but it’s actually quite a bit warmer. Yeah, back into short pants and flip flops! (That won’t last.) Highway 101 goes a little inland during the trip from Newport to Tillamook and the country side is so beautiful. Tons of livestock grazing in knee high grass and green everywhere. We’re staying at an RV campsite about 4 miles north of the city. After setting up and cleaning, etc, we headed for the Mears Lighthouse and the octopus tree. We think there were good views from the lighthouse, but it was too foggy to tell! The forest you walk through to and from the lighthouse is so pretty and so quiet! Then we went to this town that reminded us so much of Maine, it is called Oceanside. Foggy beach, quaint town it was like we were on the east coast. So pretty. Would like to stay here some summer for a month or so.

July 29, 2010, Thursday NEWPORT CITY, OR

Just to get this out of the way, Mike played golf this a.m. Yeah! He’s been wanting to for so long, but it hasn’t worked out, but it did today and he really enjoyed it! OK now this is funny. We had an appointment for the dog to be groomed today. We’ve been trying to get it done for weeks now and we actually found a groomer that had an opening. The appointment was for 1 p.m. So we figure we can make it up to Lincoln City about 25 miles up the coast. We thought we would look around and then head back down and that’s one less town to stop in on our way up the coast. That way when we move tomorrow, we can drive an exhausting 60 miles instead of 25. So we drive up the coast, we’re all talking and so forth, not paying much attention, and we come to the town (we have no map with us) and we pull over. Lots of beautiful views, cute shops, art, etc. We take pics and browse in some of the stores and have a great time. The picture here is across the street from the shops looking at the cliffs to the north. I look up at this one store front and notice that it says Depot Bay. It suddenly hits me that we are not in Lincoln City, but in some small town before you get to Lincoln City. Oh brother! We were cracking up, because we never even paid attention to where we were, we just assumed it was Lincoln City. We're such digbats! Actually, we’re really glad we weren’t paying attention ‘cause we loved this little town! Tomorrow when we pass by this way there will be no place big enough to pull over with the trailer and we would have missed this cute town.

July 28, 2010, Wednesday NEWPORT, OR

Don't know what happened there, be we are still on July 28. Anyway, we saw some plein air painters, so we stopped to see the art work. Plein air means that they were painting from a live view outside. It was a beautiful area, no wonder they picked it.

July 28, 2010, Wednesday NEWPORT CITY, OR

Today we backtracked south a little to see a few things we missed because we were pulling the trailer. We stopped at a Wood Carving place, Antique store and a bakery that sold Gluten Free Lemon Bars. Yeah and delicious! Betty would have loved the Wood Carving ‘cause there were lots and lots of Bears. There were also these really cute life sized old cowboys carved out of wood. So cute. We went to a coastal site called Devil's Punch Bowl. That's the pic you see here.

July 27, 2010, Tuesday NEWPORT CITY, OR

Today we went shopping along the bay. It’s a cute area right along the docks. There were several Sea Lions barking and resting below the docks. We visited the Yaquina Lighthouse. It’s a beautiful setting. We got there too late to go inside, so we will probably go back tomorrow. There’s this beach here called Nye Beach. It also has a cute little shopping area as well as the port, but what is so neat are the odd looking dunes on the beach. Hopefully you can see it in the pictures.

July 26, 2010, Monday NEWPORT CITY, OR

Today we packed up and drove an exhausting 50 miles! Ended up in Newport. This is the biggest city we have stayed in yet. It’s got the only Wal-Mart on the Oregon Coast and it’s not even a Super Wal-Mart! My favorite thing in this town is that there’s this artist named Rick Chambers who has painted murals on the walls of a lot of the buildings in town. He is so good and the paintings are so beautiful.

July 25, 2010, Sunday FLORENCE, OR

Spent this a.m. with the Mormon’s in Florence. It was a really great meeting. After church we took a little drive to the beach by us and took some pics. Then we went to the Dunes south of town. We hiked up and down dunes and you can’t believe how steep they are (hope you can tell by the pics). Finally I started crawling up the dunes on hands and knees and found it much easier than trying to walk upright. Maybe it was a mistake to start walking upright, I don’t know. Finally we got to the beach we were heading for, and watched the surfers and parasurfers. Of course they are wearing wet suits because the water here is freezing. All kinds of crazy people in this world! We headed back towards Hwy 101 and stopped to watch the Dune Buggies. It looked fun. Maybe when we come back down this way we’ll rent one and try it out, not on the big hill though. Also posting a pic from today that shows ocean waves coming up the river. You don't see that every day!