2009 Nehalem Bay Camping, et al

The first week of August, Tegan was at camp and Connor spent some time with Grammi & Papa and his Bare cousins. So with nothing else to do - Mick and I decided to go camping.

So not really...we wanted to go camping. With a little prior planning - we packed up the camper and Explorer and headed off to Nehalem Bay State Park. Prior planning - we reserved our campsite the week before. We were very luck to find a campsite - but the amazing thing is we got the exact same campsite we had the previous July. Good ole' E-27. Not sure why people don't like it. Maybe because there is a 'sink waste disposal' location near the corner of the site. We didn't mind...though we did camp next to like 50 million people involved in a family reunion or something. I have never heard the 'pay attention to me' crys from kids in my life. We've been camping with lots of little kids - our own and nieces and nephews - and they never act like that. Even with a bike crash - the crying is done in a minute. But not these kids....

50 million people? Well - they asked me to take a few group shots one morning....5 or 6 cameras were handed to me at once. C'mon people! These are digital shots. Share a few electronic bits! You can duplicate them for practically nothing! Or send them all to you best Photoshop guru. He can make sure you are all smiling in those combined shots. Maybe even put Aunt Mabel's head on Uncle Steve's body....

Enough of that talk... We had a great time, Sunday through Wednesday. A little cloudy in the mornings and after 6pm...but in between was blue sky, sun, and mid 60°s. You can't expect much more on the Oregon coast.

Brian. Mick, Yukon (actually looking!) at the bay in Wheeler, Oregon

Mick and Brian - enjoying the beach



Yukon - enjoying the water - far, far away from him



Brian - cooking up some meat!



Campsite E-27 - our home for a few days

Beachgrass and Blue Sky? Or just bliss....

Nothing to see here, move along. Housekeeping note, inserted here for recordkeeping purposes.

August 8th - Yard work #15. We've had 28 days of no rain - I think it rained last Tuesday, Aug 11th to break the streak. I had to mow because some areas of the lawn get the overspray from watering the flowers and do keep growing. And I guess we do water the strip of grass along the driveway. The back yard is pretty much brown, with a little green where the splashes from the blow-up pool help keep it alive. Enjoy it now - the fall rains start in just over two months...

Sunset at Newport, Oregon

Just continue to repeat...and imagine yourself at the beach....

Spring Break 2009, or Camping in a Tsunami Zone

This year for spring break we went camping at Nehalem Bay State Park. We hadn't really planned this all out weeks or months ahead of time - we were flying by the seat of our pants.

A few weeks before, we checked the State Parks reservation website, Reserve America. There were no yurt sites anywhere in the system. We decided to break out the pop-up trailer early this year. A little more work than a yurt, but then again - we have most of what we needed already packed. We didn't see too many open sites and we got distracted and just never managed to make a reservation.

With less than a week left, I set about searching to see what was available. I also had to determine which actual site to reserve. Some sites are better than others due to length of the paved pad, amount of trees, grass or sand areas, location of the fire pit, closeness of neighbor sites....on and on. We've camped in quite a few Oregon State Parks - but really haven't kept track of which sites we've like. I should make a note to do that...

So - after a few searches and looking at the park maps - I did my 'final search' - as in "This time I will reserve a site!" And this time - two yurts were available at Nehalem Bay. I had been looking mostly at Beverly Beach, due to the location near Newport. When given a chance for the yurt - we grabbed it. It was only $11 more than a tent/camper site ($27 instead of $16 - winter rates at Nehalem) - so it was definitely worth the extra cost.

The yurts come with sleeping for 5 or 6, an electric heater, a light, a deck, picnic table (sometimes two), fire pit, and basically no insulation. One night we had nice 60° temps in the yurt, the second night when it was clear and not raining - the yurt got down to 56°. The outside temps got down to 35° - which is quite cold for the Oregon coast.

We always bring a cube frig (still working 20 years after college!) and other fun stuff like Christmas lights to hang outside the yurt. I always manage to forget something - like extra extention cords and outlet splitters... They never put outlets in convienient places - or the same place in every yurt.

Our Yurt for two days at Nehalem Bay

We had a great two days and nights at Nehalem. We ate in a restaurant in nearby Manzanita one day - and at the Tillamook Cheese Factory another day. That blog post about our visit there is coming soon...watch for it. Or send me an email saying "I really, really, really want to know how they make the cheese in Oregon!"

There is another interesting item to know about camping on the Oregon Coast. Most of the campgrounds are located in a Tsunami Hazard Zone, in fact - most of the cities on the coast are as well. Kinda scary, eh? The South Beach park in Newport even has an evacuation route to a high ground location right in the park behind a few yurts. So when you hear the loud warning in the middle of the night (I hope it is loud - I've never heard it!) - you can climb up the path and watch the ocean rise, come in, and flood the campground.

Tsunami Sign at Tolovana Beach Park in Cannon Beach

Sign outside Nehalem Bay campground pointing to safety

We survived the dangerous conditions (no earthquakes on this visit - though the Juan de Fuca plate is counting down -tech words here, Pacific NW Earthquake info here) - the rain Tuesday night was the worst. Looking at the tent campers next to us after that downpour made us very glad we had the yurt.

Memorial Day Weekend Camping

Well...I put off writing this post because I needed to get some photos together to add to the story. But going through the photos we took - there are too many to choose from. Looking at the photo filenames - it looks like 270 photos were taken. Some of these were deleted immediately on the camera due to a blink or failed flash or maybe someone didn't want to smile. But threaten to withhold the s'mores - and you'll get at least a halfhearted smile.

So - I decided to create a Picasa album. It is uploading right now - 82 of our best shots. Some even worthly of publication in a magazine. We did get good weather on Saturday and Sunday and on Tuesday - but the other days it did rain. Imagine that - it rained in Oregon on the coast in May. That must have never happened before....

Check out the Picasa album. The photos tell the story. Any questions? Well - post a comment on the blog entry! You know you want to...

Here is a slideshow of the Picasa photos. I hope this works...

What to do in Portland (5 of 10?) - Vista House #2

This is a two for one post. No extra charge!

Since we didn't have digital photos to show off the beauty of the Vista House in a previous post - Mick's aunt and uncle from Tennessee graciously offered to come visit us so we could take them on a tour of the Columbia River Gorge. They both grew up in the area, so it wasn't a first time visit - but it was just the excuse we needed to get out and enjoy this gem less than 30 or so miles from downtown Portland. So - this post was going to be from the whole afternoon - but with all the good photos, I split it up. These are some Crown Point photos...

Tegan, Aunt Sue, Uncle Earl, and Connor at the start of our day

View from the Women's Forum Park of the Vista House

Another view - from the same park

The Vista House - front and center

Tegan, Earl, and Connor on the upper, outer walkway

Coming soon to this blog...where we went next. The tale will involve how we got there, why we were surprised to be there, and what we missed in the process. But what we experienced instead was wonderful!

Mother's Day 2008 - Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge

For Mother's Day this year, Mick wanted to have an outdoor adventure. With the weather not looking great for a picnic at a park - we decided on Burgerville for lunch. With a location just three blocks from church, it was an easy decision as we all love Burgerville. For those of you not living in the the SW WA / NW OR or Portland Metro area - you just might be out of luck. The farthest east location is in The Dalles, and the farthest north is Centralia, the farthest south would be Albany.... You just don't know what you are missing!

After lunch - we headed home to change into outdoor gear. It wasn't really raining, but it was wet. Our destination was the Tualatin River National Wildlife Refuge (TRNWR).





The TRNWR has been open officially for about a year. We live only four miles away, and had not come to visit yet.



The area before settlers arrived back in the early 1800s had been a wetlands. The Oregon Trail arrivals managed to drain the wetlands and turn the area into farmland and farmed for over 100 years. In 1992, restoration of the area was started.

We started with a visit to the vistor's center. Tegan found 'write in the rain' notebooks in the gift shop - and both kids wanted to get one to record our visit. They filled pages with the things we saw...like this dead tree in the floodplain.

The rain managed to hold off - and we had a great walk around one of the trails. We are sure to return another day and explore this gem so close to home!

Interesting to know - since this refuge is within an urban area - it leads to interesting things to see. One border of the refuge is a 'you pull it' junkyard.

What to do in Portland (5 of 10?) - The Vista House

Once again - I am amazed at how long it has been since we've visited one of these great Oregon treasures! I was looking in our digital photo directory of some fun Vista House photos and discovered that I don't have any. We must not have visited the Vista House since before 2005. I know I have lots of photos - all the scenic ones you can see on many websites, and even fun ones of our family. But since we moved to Tualatin over six years ago - we haven't been up to the Vista House very much. When we lived in NE Portland, we could get there in less than 30 minutes. Now - coming from Tualatin - it would take 30 minutes just to get out to Troutdale.

Anyway - I didn't want to steal someone else's photo - so I searched the 'net and found an old, Web 1.0 Tripod website I had setup so long ago. I had scanned a set of old Columbia River Gorge postcards we found at an antique store, and posted those on our site. The site was broken - but I remembered the login and got this image. Someday I'll have to see if I can network our old Power Computing Power Center 150Mhz Macintosh clone, and rescue all the old scans I created so long ago....in the 28.8 modem days....


So - you must come visit us so we can have an excuse to go see the Vista House again. It has been restored in the past 10 years. It has been around for over 90 years, and the wild weather in the Columbia River Gorge had taken a toll on the building. So - The Friends of the Vista House raised money and got the building back in shape.

Come and see! Maybe I'll have some photos to post when we go up to Hood River for a training day for our Tour de Cure event that is coming soon...

What to do in Portland (4 of 10?) - Mount Hood

Mount Hood is visible from Portland on one of the clear days we do get (closer to a 90% chance in July/August vs. a 5-10% chance in December/January). Mt. Hood is a dormant volcano. The last time Mt. Hood erupted was probably in the years just before the Lewis and Clark expedition passed through the area in 1805-1806. When the passed through, they gave the name Sandy River to one of the tributaries of the Columbia River. This river was most likely very sandy at the mouth where is meets the Columbia at this time due to the runoff from the last eruption. Today - sometimes steam and volcanic gases can still be seen escaping from fumaroles on the mountain, though not from Portland.




To get to Mt. Hood from Portland is just a quick drive east on US Hwy 26. Each year after Thanksgiving, one of our family traditions has been to go Christmas tree hunting up on Lolo Pass Road (which is not exactly on Mt. Hood, but still at 1,500-3,000' elevation.) In the 10+ years we have been doing this, we have had warm rainy days, cold rainy days, snow storming days, and this year - cold and sunny with lots of snow.

If you are a skier, Mt. Hood has plenty of ski resorts - I can't really help you there because I have only been skiing once - probably 12 years ago at Mt. Hood Meadows. We have also gone up to Timberline Lodge - built in the 1930s as a WPA project. You best bet for skiing information is a website like the Mt. Hood Guide.

Of course - Mt. Hood is also the starting point for many of the Tour de Cure courses.

My sledding hill is bigger than your sledding hill!

What to do in Portland (3 of 10?) - Mt. St. Helens

So - have you ever visited a volcano? An active volcano? Come to Portland and we'll take you to see Mount Saint Helens.

Mt. St. Helens in not actually in Portland, or even in Oregon. It is located a few miles away in Washington. On a nice summer day, it can be clearly seen from Portland, along with Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams.


We made a trip up to see the volcano in July 2007. It is probably 100 miles from our house to the visitor center that is closest to the crater.

The Johnson Ridge Observatory is the viewing station closest to the crater. It is less than 6 miles away from the growing lava dome.

The Coldwater Ridge Visitor Center is a little farther away, but still has great views. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds in the US Forest Service, it has been closed.

You can see a live view of Mt. St. Helens from the volcano cam. If you don't see much, there is probably a storm or low clouds in the area. Check again later.

Besides the grand view of a live volcano, the recovery of the wilderness is amazing to see. On our visit - we saw a ground squirrel up close. Strangely enough, we found him reading a warning sign "ATTENTION ANIMALS: Beware of human food" We weren't about to give him our goodies, and he soon gave up (or paid attention to the warning sign) , and went in search of more suitable food. The sign also said "Attention Humans: DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS". Good thing we both paid attention.

Tegan and Connor had a great time (so did Mick & Brian). Seeing the mountain, steam coming up from the crater, the wildlife (lots of elk through a telescope at one location), the visitor centers...it was a perfect day.

What to do in Portland (2 of 10?) - Silver Falls

A completely different adventure from visiting OMSI, is a quick trip out to Silver Falls State Park. It is a state park with 10 waterfalls, a campground, a horse campground, and a day use area. This is the link to the official State Parks website.

I don't have any photos to post - because we haven't been out there since we got our digital camera a few years ago.

The trail to see all 10 falls is quite long, and one we never completed. Many of the falls are viewable with a quick walk from the day use area.

So - you've got to come visit so we can see a few more of the falls we've missed!

What to do in Portland (1 of 10?) - OMSI

So - you are planning to visit us here in Portland, Oregon. First of all - we actually live in Tualatin. It is a suburb of Portland about 10 or so miles down I-5 south of the city. We used to live in NE Portland, but the commute to work for Brian and the cost of houses within Portland pushed us out. The closest house with all the features we wanted was found in Tualatin.

So once you arrive - either by plane and the Portland International Airport, or by train at Union Station, or by the Interstate Highway System - we've got to figure out what you want to do. The opportunities are endless! So - here is the first in a series of posts about some of our favorite things to do. Make a list of the ones you like

A favorite of young and old alike - the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry - is never called that. It goes by the name of OMSI.

OMSI has so many fun things to do - you should just go to their website and read about them. One of the added attractions is a tour of the USS Blueback. This is a real submarine floating out in the Willamette River. This sub was used in the movie The Hunt for Red October. Do you recognize it?

During the fall of 2007, Linda Maytan came out for a visit and we toured the sub.

Connor even got to drive!