VACATION ON THE COAST!

Julie and I just returned from 6 days camping along the Oregon coast. We had a great time and enjoyed much cooler weather than those still stuck here in Everett over the past week.

We set up our base camp at Beachside State Park on July 24th, which was a day later than originally planned. It was much colder than we anticipated, we forgot that the coast can be 30 degrees cooler than inland (which turned out to be in our advantage, when we discovered that temps hovered around 100 degrees while we were gone). S0 the nights were chilly (around 55 degrees) and the days cool, but pleasant. (60s to high 60's/low 70's). It only rained on the last night, although we were socked in in the fog for much of our trip. BTW, UV rays come thru fog and make your transition glasses dark (which makes it hard to see in the fog) and you can still get major sunburn but don't realize it till way too late! We wore our hoodies most of the time so basically our faces got scorched. Julie says my left ear (which faced the sun while driving) was purple it was so red.

First we visited the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area near Florence and walked the Taylor Dunes trail to the Ocean, a round trip of 2 1/2 miles thru the sand dunes. During that trip we were visited by a snake, which Julie assured me was not poisonous. We just took a picture of it and let it continue on it's own. We were very happy that it was foggy and cool, cause I figured this was going to be a hot hike. I was wrong, and it was a very nice day.





Day two was a trip to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. It was ok, but not as good as I was expecting. The draw was their Shark exhibit, where you walked thru the tunnel and had sharks, rock fish, rays, and other fishes swimming all around you. They were beside you, below you, and above you. That was cool, but the rest of the exhibits weren't much to talk about. They had an otter exhibit, a sea lion exhibit, an octopus exhibit (which the window was so small you could only have 2 people look in at at a time), and oh yeah, the aviary. Supposed to be the biggest one of the west coast, but it only had 4 different types of birds. The puffins were very fun to watch as they "flew" thru the water. They can actually fly, but catch their prey by swimming underwater and they are very fast. Think of a penguin and you'll get the idea. The two puffins shown are male, and one was quite funny trying to "eat" the fake grass platform.