Category Archives: Travel

Gleneden Beach, Oregon

How about these rocks with trees growing on them? I found them quite impressive on our drive along the Oregon Coast to our 1st night destination just south of Lincoln City, Oregon. Once we found Salashan Spa we decided to take a walk to Gleneden Beach along a nature trail beside the golf course.

Standing at the beginning of the trail we could hear crashing waves in the distance.

The walk was about a mile to the shore.

It would be great to have some audio so you could hear just how loud these crashing waves were. It was very nice to be along the Pacific again. It’s been since February 2010 that Dear and I have walked along the Pacific ocean. At the beginning of March 2010 we moved from Camarillo, California back to our home in Washington. Our home in Camarillo was about 8 miles from the Pacific. As nice as it was to have our weekly beach walks we are very happy and content to be back in our home in Washington State that is a lot farther from the Pacific Ocean…

Hope your September is starting well. I’m really looking forward to be back to Women’s Bible Study starting up next Tuesday.

 

Cannon Beach

Before I show you all my shots from Cannon Beach in Oregon I have a burning question for you…

Did you put all your white shoes away? It seems the rules have changed over time and white shoes are now acceptable after Labor Day.

Cannon Beach was a stop along our way down the coast of Oregon but just to take some photos. In the future after seeing all the beaches from Astoria to Lincoln City we would choose Cannon Beach to return to.

“The City of Cannon Beach is located on the Pacific Northwest Coast of Oregon, 80 miles west of Portland and 25 miles south of Astoria, Cannon Beach is surrounded by the rugged natural beauty of forests, ocean beaches, and rivers. Only four miles in length, and with a population of 1,695, Cannon Beach is a popular and picturesque resort area, playing host to an estimated over 750,000 visitors annually. Although Cannon Beach was incorporated as a city in 1957, it has been occupied much longer: first by native cultures, and then, since the late 1800s, by American settlers. In 1806, Captain William Clark, of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, traveled south to our area in order to secure needed blubber from a whale beached near the mouth of Ecola Creek.”

This is the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse. It has some interesting history behind it and you can read about it here.

“Located near Cannon Beach on the North coast of Oregon, Haystack Rock is a unique monolith that attracts wildlife and tourists alike. Towering 235 feet  over the beach, the Rock is home to nesting seabirds in the summer and marine  invertebrates all year long. It is one of the largest “sea stacks” on  America’s Pacific coast.”

I was excited to see these pelicans. It has been a long time since our weekly walks on the beach in California where we’d see pelicans all the time.

I’m looking forward to returning to Cannon Beach in the future for a whole weekend.

Astoria

We started out from our house while it was still dark. I saw the sun rise in the rear view mirror when we were approaching Olympia, Washington. We had never traveled from Washington to the Oregon coast before so when we got off of the interstate all roads and sights were new to us. We drove through Kelso and into Longview where we crossed from Washington into Oregon on the Lewis and Clark Bridge.

Stopping at a viewpoint and looking back I got a shot of the bridge with the sun rising in the East.

The view West towards the mouth of the Columbia river where it meets the Pacific ocean was a lot different.

We passed through many small sleepy towns on our way to Astoria. Our first stop in Astoria was to have some breakfast. We stopped at Stephanie’s Cabin. The restaurant didn’t look anything like a cabin but the food was good old fashioned grub. We split the Cabin Omelet ~ Ham, bacon, sausage, mushrooms, cheese, hashbrowns, covered with their own sausage gravy and served with a homemade biscuit.

Yes folks this is what a heart attack on a plate looks like but only if this is the way you ate every day or for every meal. It was a real tasty vacation treat for one of our 2 meals of the day…

After breakfast we checked out a few of the Astoria sights. “The City of Astoria– the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies, is situated on the Oregon shore of the Columbia River. The city is nestled on steep hillsides overlooking the Columbia River, and is a short distance from the Pacific Ocean.”

This is the Astoria-Megler Bridge and judging from all the comments that you have made about the bridge it’s a scary one to cross.  That’s Washington across the Columbia. The bridge is 4 miles long.

From a distance it looks quite tame.

This was our view leaving Astoria crossing Young’s Bay on Highway 101.

Our next seaside stop was in Cannon Beach.

Here in the Northwest the big news is that we are finally getting a week long stretch of warm sunshiny days. I’ll be watering more and keeping my sunglasses handy. Hope the weather is treating you nice where you are.

Eating Well…

…twice a day.

We’ve found some fun cafes and have also enjoyed meals in the spas we stayed overnight in. For us older folks it works well to limit ourselves to 2 meals while traveling. We’ve been splitting dishes, too. Fish tacos, granola crusted french toast, an omelette stuffed to the gills and covered with gravy (a real heart attack on a plate) We split that omelette, thank goodness. We also came across some fun food related scenes and eateries from our past that made us slam on the brakes to take a photo…

“Oh I’d love to be an Oscar Meyer Weiner, that is what I’d truly like to be…”

We’ve been having a nice relaxing time and that has inspired us to plan another getaway soon…

Tomorrow we head home. Can you believe it’s September already?!

Oh Ye of Little Faith…

We have been having weather that is just perfect for Dear and me. We saw lots of beauty today and have seen and heard the power of our Creator.

I’ll share more when I get back to my little corner of the world. Until then we are finding sunshine in the most unexpected places…

Hope you are all well…

Leave it to Us…

…to pick the worst weather days of the week to head out on a road trip to Oregon.

No worries because we are sure to drown our weather sorrows eating lovely plates of food like these.

If you don’t see anything new around here or don’t see comments from me on your posts you’ll know why. As usual I’m not guaranteeing you won’t see anything new here. It all depends on wi-fi and down time in a hotel room.

Glamorous…

“It would have been pretty darn difficult for actress Dina Merrill to have ever pulled off playing a commoner on stage, film or TV. She just had too much class. The epitome of poise and glamor, the New York-born socialite and celebrity was born in 1925 the daughter of financier E.F. Hutton, the founder of the Wall Street firm, and heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post of the Post cereal fortune”. (from a mini biography of Dina Merrill)

I really enjoyed the glamour surrounding the Hillwood Estate in Washington D.C. I’m not one to fuss much with glamour but I can appreciate it in others. Unlike Dina Merrill I can pull off being a commoner every day.

I’m quite comfortable in blue jeans and a comfy tee-shirt. I like a certain level of glamour once in a while. That glamour still has to have an element of comfort with it.

Dina Merrill whose birth name was Nedenia Marjorie Hutton, was the only child of Merriweather’s union with E.F. Hutton.

Wow! How about these wedding bouquets!?

Marjorie Merriweather Post seemed to have connections with other very glamorous people, too.

I think my most glamorous days have been at weddings. Growing up my mother always made sure my sisters and I had a new home sewn dress for Easter and Christmas. Those were glamorous days, too. How about you? Do you enjoy glamour and what was the most glamorous event you attended or were the star of?

Hillwood Japanese Gardens and Dacha…

There was one more post hanging back from my favorite museum in Washington D.C. and I better share it before I forget. The Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens was full of surprises.

The Japanese-Style garden was tucked below the edge of the other areas of the huge estate.

You had to go down these stairs to enjoy the garden.

Tucked into a wooded area and surrounded by rhododendrons and azaleas, the Dacha, or Russian country house, is a romanticized interpretation of a small peasant house. Built in 1969 during the Cold War, when U.S. – Soviet relations were tense, Dacha represents a nostalgic view of Russian culture.

The architecture features many elements typical of authentic Russian peasant dwellings, such as the whole-log construction and the intricate carvings around the windows and door. Other details are American adaptations of Russian motifs. The bright colors of the window carvings and the roof’s onion-shaped domes are typical of Russian churches. The Dacha on this property is used for museum programs and Hillwood’s changing exhibitions.

I hope your summer is going well. Dear was off last week and he worked on our basement project and it’s getting close to getting done. He has another week off the end of August into September and I’m dragging him away from the house so he does something besides work on this old house. We booked a night on the coast of Oregon and a night at Bonneville Hot Springs on the Columbia River in Washington State just across from Oregon. I’m looking forward to it. Have you all already had some vacation?

Sequim Lavender Farm Tour…

Because Moisi is my father we made it to the Lavender Festival over an hour early. Most farms weren’t open to visitors until 10:00 A.M. so we got our bearings with my favorite navigator in the back seat. Last year I journeyed to the festival all by my lonesome. It’s a lot more fun with my navigator and a bloggy friend who understands that we take photos of everything! Jill and her camera are great companions for me. You’ll need to check out her beautiful perspective of our days, too.

Here’s my navigator, Katie. We had time to stop and look out at the Dungeness Spit and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. We gave a shout out to our Canadian friends across the Strait. Hello Pondside and to the east of Vancouver Island, hello Girls from MGCC!

We picked the roads on the perimeter to travel and were happy to spot this away from downtown spot for breakfast. A great start to our farm tour. We all chose the 1-1-1 for breakfast. One egg, one piece of sausage or bacon, and one pancake or piece of french toast.

Jill was served her coffee in a lavender mug. While we were waiting for our breakfast the owner of the restaurant brought us a bouquet of flowers for the table. He showed us the bush the mock orange blooms came from that were in the bouquet.

When breakfast was done we were ready to head to our first farm of the day…

I’m going to have to break down my posts by farm so that my posts will be manageable. Oliver’s was a nice start with just a few other people around. Each of the farms had nice gift shops to shop in and some of the farms had several vendors on sight with their tents ready to lure you in to buy their wares…