Cabin and Coast

Hello dear friends and family!
So sorry to leave you mulling our mosquito infested moments for so long but we are back on the internets! Well, to be totally honest we did have internet access most of this past week but there were more important things to do, at least in our estimation of important.  These included serious, heavy-duty relaxing and meeting my cousins Maya and Leila for the first time! So sorry, but y'all take back seat to seeing the Sparkle Fairy Princess and sidekick (as yet without a call name).

Since it has been so long I'm gonna do a "quick" recap, leaving pictures and in-depth stories for later.

So the reason we stayed so long in central Oregon was that I had rented a cabin as a surprise for Rob's birthday present.  Because our travel plans are so unpredictable this presented a little bit of a challenge, including aborting the initial idea of renting one near Lake Tahoe when Rob announced he was sick of driving through mountains and wanted to stay on the coast (where we encountered....Mountains!).  After some sneaky phone calls and a "trail ride" used as a cover-up we wound up at Crater Lake Resort in a very cute cabin for two nights.  Luckily it more than made up for the two previous nights.

There was no TV service but a tiiiiiny television and the DVD library at the office/store let us get some solid entertainment time in.  There was also a little book library which, greatly to my surprise, had about 6 books I've been wanting to read.  Generally these sort of libraries hold some mystery, a few classics and mostly ROMANCE. And that's not my preferred reading. Not that I'm knocking the genre as a whole mind, it just has very, very few examples of decent writing, and for me that's the most important part of any book.  Anyway Rob had quite the laugh when I came back into the cabin with a stack of books that would have taken me at least a week to read (but only if I ate and slept in between).  I enjoyed having them around though, and that's what's important right?

The resort also had some canoes guests could take on the river (more of a creek really) so in the morning Rob got to take his first canoe ride! Initially I had him sitting in back since he's stronger but since the back mostly controls the steering and despite being a very fast learner it was his very first ride, we switched spots when we reached a little waterfall that marked the upper limit of the canoeable stretch of creek.  I think the tippy-ness inherent in canoes made him initially nervous and I still think he'll choose a rowboat if given the choice but by the end of the hour he was anticipating my "orders" (since whoever's in the back is the captain...no it didn't' go to my head....too much) and we were navigating smoothly.  It was also a very difficult river to learn to canoe on, in addition to being small and wiggly it was low from the drought and filled with snags and logs and sandbars, a true maze to navigate.  The longest stretch we could go straight was about 20 feet so he really was thrown right into "the deep end" to use another water activity metaphor.

After we left the resort (cheery and well rested) we headed back to the Oregon coast. It was quite a drive and we got to Honeyman State Park at about sunset.  Sadly we didn't get to see the huge dunes it is famous for because once we'd broke camp in the morning we couldn't find anywhere to park! We had also told my cousin Lauren and her husband Terapat that we would be staying with them in Seattle that night and had quite the drive ahead of us, we also had a few important stops to make on the way up so we left the park, craning our necks to catch a glimpse of the shore, and wondering exactly how "sandboarding" works.  Honeyman is just south of Florence, where I was born! We drove into town to find the hospital, which now appears to be private rather than state/county run.  After grabbing a few pictures we headed two towns up the coast road to Waldport where my parents had their first house. We strolled down Main Street, grabbed some great chinese food for lunch and decided the Oregon coast is a really nice place to live (at least in the summer).  Before heading out of town we found my parents old house, which has been greatly renovated and expanded. There were a few cars in the driveway so we didn't stay long or get any pictures, but boy, what a great spot.  Last house on a dead end, right on the river, certainly not a spot I'd have minded growing up on :P.

On the road again we turned toward Seattle, putting the coast as a definite place to re-visit and spend more time on. The drive was long but identifying the impressive peaks visible from rt. 5 was entertaining, and I got to drool over the horses in ranches along the road. We pulled up the very steep drive to our Seattle hosts at 10:30 and hit the very comfortable mattress after a warm welcome.