OCEAN!!

After leaving my parents in Reno, we began our journey up to Bellingham to see Devin's mom and extended family. As it is about a 14 hour drive, we opted to do it in more than 1 day. Our first day, we stopped over in Eugene, OR where I used to live many eons ago :) We stayed with our wonderful friends the Garvers. They are always so kind and let various members of my family stay at their house whenever we're in town, pretty much now matter how busy they are or how many people are already in their house. We were also able to see my beloved friend Kiwi (aka Kari) and meet her dog Ziggy. It was so wonderful to catch up with old friends and have a safe place to stay for the night. I just hope poor Randy is over his cold & allergies now. Poor man was dying while we were there.

Because we have been landlocked for so long, we decided to take the scenic route from Eugene to Bellingham. We drove over and up along the Oregon Coast. Yay Ocean!!! We stopped at the Tillamook cheese factory, did the tour, sampled some fabulous cheese, and got Tillamook Mudslide ice cream. Anyone who has not had this, is living a sad life. Period. And it was sunny! Those of you have live in the Pacific Northwest know what a miracle and a blessing that is!

After the yumminess, we finished our trek up to Cannon Beach, passing my old band camp along the way. This is a favorite spot of Devin's family for years, and I had never been. So we checked into our campsite and headed to the beach! Yay beach! It was like 80 degrees! We walked from where we entered, around down town, all the way down to famous Haystack Rock. I think it was at least a mile. Devin was highly disappointed to see that the Rock is very regulated now and you can't go out to see things and we were even chastised for sitting on a small rock (ruin the wildlife or some such thing). I teased him that it was part of his hippie heritage coming through :) I also managed to get so sandy and wet that Devin threatened to never take me to the beach again; but after a quick change of shorts and some napkins from our glove compartment, all was fine.

We went back to our campsite and then ate at Mo's. Yay fresh seafood! It is joyous to not be in a landlocked state. We had clam chowder and fish & chips. We then went back to our campsite and played some cribbage, which I won, before deciding to walk to the beach again.

On our way there, I saw a kitty and so I talked to it and it came to me and I pet it, and there was much rejoicing on my part. Walking away from the kitty, we looked down by a drainage area and there was a raccoon! It was probably 8 ft away. Ridiculous! But it ducked back into its drainage pipe.

On the beach, it was very smoky and foggy from the ocean and a fire we'd seen earlier that day. We couldn't even see Haystack Rock. We cuddled close together to keep warm and watched the waves and a seagull we named Steve. As we were contemplating leaving, someone came and offered us their fire, which we gladly accepted. So, we both took turns gathering so firewood, and then sat until the fire died. Yay for the ocean and yay for the nice people who gave us their fire!

On the way back from the beach, the raccoon was still there! It peered out of its drainage pipe at us with its eery eyes and when we started taking pictures, it came towards us! This thing had no fear whatsoever of humans. We think it may have been a mom protecting her babies, but it was freaky none the less. As we walked on, it was still watching us. Creepy...

The next day, we visited all of the shops in Cannon Beach (well not all of them but as many as Devin would let me torture him with) and got pastries from their bakery. Their Marionberry turnovers, best thing ever. Even hours and days later. After a quick stop at the beach once more (and seeing some large dead jellyfish and some crabs and sand shrimp), we headed up to Seaside to Norma's for lunch. We got clam chowder, and it was fabulous. Devin couldn't stop talking about it, it was that good. One quick picture of Molly by the ocean, and we were on our way to Bellingham! A few hours later, we arrived, safe and sound, and a little bit sandy.