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.