The Great Northwest Vacation- Day 11- The Oregon Coast and Multnomah Falls

For our last day on the Oregon Coast, we planned on taking a tour of Yaquina Lighthouse just north of Newport.  Tours there are first come, first serve and they are limited, so we made sure to get there early.  Turns out that we were early enough to be there before they opened.  The nice old man that ran the place with his wife came out to raise the flag and it looked like he was having a little trouble, so I asked him if he'd like some help.  He let me do the honors.

Every time during the previous couple of days when we would talk about taking a tour of the lighthouse, we would always say "Ya-kwine'-a lighthouse, or Ya-key'-na, or Ya-kwin'-a, however you say it".  Helpfully, they had the pronunciation right there when you walk in the door.

We headed to the wildlife viewing area first since our tour wasn't going to start for another hour or so, and stopped for a quick picture of the lighthouse.

There was a lot of cool wildlife to see, like sea lions (with their pups), gulls...

cool colored urchins...

and we even saw a couple of grey whales spouting.

The tour of the lighthouse was super cool.  We had to climb 114 stairs (Elise counted) to get to the top.  Here are Malinda and Abby looking at the Fresnel lens at the top of the lighthouse.  I just love their expressions.

Our lighthouse tour guide was this super-nice girl who dressed in period clothes and explained all about how the lighthouse was built and maintained back in the day.  It totally felt like we were visiting a church history site with a nice sister missionary.  

The kids wanted to play a while in the visitor's center interactive center after the lighthouse tour.  They had fun with the old-school toys.

Abby wanted to stop at this place to get a picture on our way out of Newport (OK, it was really Malinda's idea, but Abby sure thought it was cool).

We hit Multnomah Falls just before we went to our hotel for the night.  It was just as beautiful as we remembered from our honeymoon almost 15 years previous.

The Great Northwest Vacation- Day 10- The Oregon Coast

Malinda and the kids got up at the crack of dawn to find more sand dollars on the beach.  They got pretty good at spotting them and had more success than the previous night.

We headed south from Seaside to Ecola Beach State Park. We wanted to get to the beach early since it was going to be a low tide.  Malinda had done her homework and it turned out to be an amazing place.

After driving to the park we made our way to the first overlook and tried to find a way down to the beach. That attempt failed miserably, but we were able to get there by driving to Indian Beach.

Ecola Beach State Park was a pretty cool place.  In the first half hour we found dozens of complete sand dollars, and there were tons of starfish, lots of crabs, and cool anemones to look at all over.

Jody and Sarah got to the beach a while after us, and by then all of the sand dollars had been gathered up by us and the few other beach combers, so we planted a few along the beach for Sarah to find.  She was so excited to pick them up and put them in the bag (after she got over her grumpiness caused by falling in the cold water... she did NOT like that at all!).

Sarah most definitely did not like this tiny crab I showed her. "That's disgust!"

After spending a couple of hours looking at and looking for cool sea creatures, the kids started to just play in the sand.  They had lots of fun building sand drip castles (aka poop castles).

Heading further south, we stopped at this pretty overlook, then headed on to Tillamook.

We enjoyed touring the cheese factory, trying out the free samples, and buying some fresh cheese curds.

Heading down to Newport to get to the hotel, we stopped just north of town to check out the Ocean House B&B, which is where Malinda and I stayed for a couple of nights on our honeymoon.

Dinner that night was at The Chowder Bowl, which is supposed to be one of the best seafood shops in town (according to the online reviews).  We liked it a lot, but Malinda, Ben, and Elise all said it didn't compare to the best chowdah we got at Faneuil Hall in Boston last year.

Since our hotel had a pool and the hotel Jody & Sarah stayed at didn't, we invited them over for a swim visit just before bed.

The Great Northwest Vacation- Day 9- Mt. St. Helens and Seaside, Oregon

Our last morning aboard the Pearl was a little bittersweet.  We were excited for the things we still had left to do, but sad to be leaving the ship (and the food!)  Here we are hauling all of our stuff off the ship.

We left Jody and Sarah to make their way to Seaside on their own since they didn't want to make the trip up to Mt. St. Helens.  

We first stopped at the Forest Learning Center which is run by the Weyerhaeuser lumber company.  It was a pretty cool stop and they had lots of exhibits with interesting stuff to see.  We took a 1 mile hike down a trail to an overlook.  We saw several giant slugs along the way. 

Unfortunately when we got to the end of the trail, there was no overlook.  Apparently the trees have grown quite a bit since that trail was first made.

Back inside the center, the kids had fun with the various hands-on displays.  

One of the coolest exhibits was to see how much difference there was between the reforested areas (planted by Weyerhaeuser) and the Forest Service areas that were allowed to grow naturally. It was also cool to learn how the sound waves from the eruption bounced off the atmosphere and reflected back to earth in a big wave, and that many people who were very close to the mountain didn't even hear the explosion because of the way the sound traveled.

On our way up to the Johnston Ridge Observatory we stopped at an overlook to take a few photos.  It would be the best view of the mountain that we got due to a lingering layer of clouds.

By the time we got to the Johnston Ridge Observatory, the top of the mountain was almost entirely hidden in the clouds.

The observatory was pretty cool, too, with many interesting things to look at.  We had to get to the coast before it got too late, so we left before the clouds could clear (not that it looked like they were going to anytime soon).

We headed for the coast and hoped to get our Washington State sign photo just before crossing over into Oregon, but as we left Longview, Washington, we never saw a sign except for a tiny little sign above the roadway right in the middle of the bridge crossing over the Columbia River.  No good.  We decided to give it one more try when we got to Astoria.  We took the Astoria-Megler bridge across the river again, and again, no sign when we got off the bridge.  Luckily we drove a 1/2 mile up the road to a little rest stop and we finally got our Washington State sign!

Headed back across the Astoria-Megler Bridge into Oregon.

We made our way to Seaside and got checked into the hotel which was right on the beach.  We stopped in at Jody and Sarah's room (they had arrived before us) and they were too tired to go beach combing. Even though it was very brisk and getting dark, the kids were excited to head out to look for sand dollars. After searching the beach for about 40 minutes, the kids were happy to have found a few good ones.

After the beach, the kids took a short dip in the hotel pool to finish off the night before they kicked us out to close the pool.

The Great Northwest Vacation- Day 8- Victoria, British Columbia

I spent most of the morning in bed since I think the combination of juggling (the day before) and the ship moving really threw my equilibrium for a loop.  Fortunately, by late morning I was feeling quite a bit better.

After several days of not being able to do the rock wall climbing, it was nice that the last day was warm enough and not too windy that the kids were able to climb the wall.

Abby made it about a third of the way up, but the other three kids all made it to the top and rang the bell, earning them a round of applause from the other much older climbers waiting on the ground.  The kids thought it was extra cool that they made it to the top when many of the older climbers didn't.

Our next stop was Victoria, British Columbia.

Cool water taxis in Victoria Bay.

The British Columbia Parliament Building.

Super cool killer whale topiary near the Fairmont Empress Hotel.

We parted ways with Jody and Sarah since she wasn't sure that Sarah could make it walking much farther. After splitting up, we felt bad that Jody was possibly going to have to carry Sarah most of the way back to the ship, and we hoped to run into her on the way back to the ship, but we didn't find her until we got back.  Fortunately she decided to grab a pedi-cab with Sarah and take the easy way back to the ship.  Meanwhile, we made our way back to the ship via the Beacon Hill Park where we saw some cool trees with U-shaped trunks, some funny ducks, and some pretty cool vegetation/gardens.

Abby earned her ride back for the last half mile, again for not whining or complaining.