Babies Squared: Parents-Only Vacation: Day 2, Cannon Beach, Oregon

Ahh. Life after vacation is slowly resuming its normalcy, though its a relative type of normal. But you don't really care, do you? You came back for more vacation pictures. And so you shall have.

We spent the night in Hood River, near Mount Hood, as described in the last post. I had the best night's sleep ever! That waterfall did the trick to lull me to sleep, which is a feat considering the snoring from Keith with which the waterfall was competing. He was sick, he said, over and over. Odd that the snoring when he's sick and not sick doesn't differ much, but being in my post-waterfall daze, I just let the comment slide.

Our plans were to hike up to Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood. It's the really cool lodge that was used to film the exterior scenes for The Shining. Yes, Estes Park in Colorado was used too, but most of the outside shots are at Timberline. It's a moderate hike of a few miles and we thought it would be good to get the blood flowing. We thought that until we got to Hood River the day before and heard that there was still a lot of snow at Mount Hood, in fact skiers and snowboarders were stoked to have this extended winter sport season. I'm not of the winter sport variety, so we opted to skip the hiking, and head to the coast instead. In retrospect, snowshoeing would have been cool, but we didn't have the correct gear.

Into the car we went. Later, Hood River! Neat town, but very windy.

We had about a 2 hour drive ahead of us, which is not too bad. Here is where we were headed.

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More gorgeous scenery along the way. To our right, river and trees.

To our left, waterfalls scattered about the cliffs. See the one?

We passed through Portland, hit a little west suburb traffic, and hit a portion of the Cascade mountains. First just lots of trees and clearish skies.

And later hills, up and down, and pea-soup fog. Peaceful and calm.

And then, when the one radio station we could hear clearly was playing this song for the 4th time, no lie, well, maybe a little exaggerated, whatever, we saw the sign, 4 more miles!

And then, there she was! The Pacific, that beautiful thing. Of all the oceans, I love her the most. Indian Ocean is close second. I may have squealed when we saw her.

Naturally we headed right for a parking lot so we could run right out onto the beach to snap pictures, as if we've never seen the ocean before.

And we also took more pictures of seagulls than I know what to do with.

And to our far left, was Haystack Rock. If you're seen the movie Goonies, you know this monolith. Turned out that on this particular day it was a supertide, and the area around the big rock that is normally underwater was exposed, so we headed that way on a little walk.

Saw proper sand dollars.

And a seagull eating a starfish.

We got closer and closer.

And then I officially went to heaven. The abundance of sea life exposed due to the extreme tide made for a very happy Trudi, and we spent at least 30 minutes just staring and exploring and bending down to see closer. Those big starfish are sunflower starfish, the green things are anemones. We originally thought maybe sea cucumber, but we were wrong.

It's a living shell sculpture!

And, naturally there was a seagull staring at us the entire time.

What I really loved about Haystack Rock was that there was an awareness group that had volunteer teachers standing around, answering questions and telling people about more about the rock, the wildlife, the beach. They had a large pickup truck with educational signs all over it. The dork in me was sooooo happy. Here is one of the signs.

I can't describe the feeling of calm and wonder I felt standing here staring at the shell and barnacle formations. It really is a chance to see into a world normally hidden out of sight. Amazing.

More coolness, in bright colors.

We absorbed as much as we could, and started our walk back to our hotel. Instead of walking back on the beach, we cut up to the road and walked through a residential area of Cannon Beach. The town was picturesque, small cottagey homes with gray shingles, and loads of white trim. I almost expected 7 dwarfes to come marching by, or for cartoon birds and mice to make Cinderella a dress. The gardens were well-maintained, the houses, cute, and every block had a street like this that looked down towards the Pacific Ocean. It must be like living in very expensive heaven.

A little more walking, and we were back to our car, but it was still not time to check in. Being the planner I am, I had back-up plans. About 30 minutes south of Cannon Beach, is Tillamook, Oregon.You know what Tillamook is known for? Keith's favorite food item: cheese.

Oh. You thought beer? That's a beverage, not food item.

So we went to visit the large allegedly well-known cheese factory. We expected to learn something new at this place, but we didn't exactly expect it to be such a ....uhhh....cultural experience. This sign should say: Visitors Entrace: Teeth and Waistlines optional.

At this point Keith and I had a disagreement. He wanted to go learn stuff about cheese. I wanted to go eat cheese. I never thought I'd have to talk Keith into eating cheese, but I did. And I failed. We went to go read big boring signs about the cheesemaking process and stare down into these big windows while people were doing their jobs. I"m sure it is interesting, but I could not hear the reading-to-myself-in-my-head over the rumbling of my stomach.

We stopped by during an especially busy time of the day, as you can see the guys below demonstrating. This particular part of cheesemaking is the very important cross your arms and stare at the people staring at you process.

We moved past about 7 windows when we got to this one with 40lb blocks of cheese when suddenly Keith said that seeing the cheese made him hungry. Finally! I don't remember anything from him saying that...

...until we got to the little cafeteria downstairs and eyed the grilled cheese menu. We both went with the CheeseWorks, if you're wondering. Melty goodness.

After the sammich, we took a small breath and headed to a counter. Not the grilled cheese one, but the ice cream counter. Hmmm. So, before you look at this picture and think that I'm a complete glutton, let me explain something. On our way to the ice cream counter a cute little girl walked by with small cone with 2 scoops on it. It looked small, and very manageable. A perfect dessert size. So I order a 2 scoop cone, but instead of being handed something small, I get this. And at first, I though, OOOOH, I can't eat all this! But I did. OOOOH. I did!

It took us a decent while to finish our cones, undo our pant buttons and waddle back to the car for the drive back to Cannon Beach. For now we've seen the ocean, we walked along it, we've had cheese and ice cream, and now it's time to nap.

On the drive down to Tillamook we passed a spectacular overlook pull-off, but we were driving too fast to stop. We made a mental note to stop on the way back and I'm so glad we did. It was worth it.

There were also a few random pull-offs with access to beached. One more thing we love about the northern pacific coast is that there are little crescent shaped beaches tucked in between large cliffs. We needed walk off a little of that ice cream, and at one of the beach pull-offs, we headed down the trail. This particular trail had a little swinging hang bridge to cross before you get the beach. I'm all for adventure, but let's just say that walking across a bridge like this with a thunderfooted person who weight significantly more than you do is not fun.

The beach we found on the other side of the bridge and puddles of mud was pretty. And had logs laying about. Pebbles, logs, rocks, trees, so much texture.

So, I'm busy admiring nature and enjoying the quiet shoosh-shoosh of waves crashing onto the shore. I turn around, and Keith is walking to this tree yelling Imma climb that thing! From time to time the root of boys' behavior shows, and this was one of those times. Boys. They're just born wanting to climb stuff. He climbed it, I took a picture. It's what we do.

And then remembered that nap we wanted. We finally got back to Cannon Beach, checked in and headed the room. Which, again, was nice but nothing special.

Until you look out of the window and the ocean is RIGHT THERE! Just right there. And the seagull. This little buddy stayed with us almost the entire visit at this hotel. I'm assuming it was the same one, he came back each time, sat right there and peered into the room.