The Oregon beaches are the most beautiful we’ve ever visited.  So, we packed up and went to Cannon Beach with Jeff and Betsy and Bill and Eileen.  Above you may recognize Haystack Rock which featured in the opening scenes of The GOONIES, one of our favorite movies from when the girls were small.

Not  what we had for lunch exactly, but we did see some sea creatures.  To those of you intent upon picking these things up, remember SEA creatures.  They don’t do well out of water, as we learned from years volunteering at the NC Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores.

Also at the Oregon coast in 1806, Lewis and Clark spent their final westward winter.  They chose this area because of the plentiful game and source of firewood and salt with which to cure the meat they hunted.  They were stocking up for the long return journey so didn’t enjoy the beach as much as we did.

Here is Mark with an old friend from Mandan.  For years we have had this conversation about how her name is pronounced.  In ND they say Sakakawea but we all learned Sakajawea.  The ranger tried to tell us  that even her original tribe of Shoshone didn’t have a “J” sound in their language.  I think it was actually a “G” sound because how could anything we learned in the third grade be wrong!

 And our final stop was at the Maritime and River Museum in Astoria.  This is a fantastic place which chronicles what it takes to get ships in and out of the Columbia River over “the bar” where the river meets the ocean.   Imagine a huge river meeting the turbulent ocean and you kind of have a picture of what the river pilots must deal with.  This display was a diarama  of  a rescue in this area.  It was an actual Coast Guard boat suspended inside the museum.  My bad pictures do not even give you the perspective needed to see how incredible it is.

So, the reason these posts have been sporadic is because of bad wifi.  We’ve been in the mountains for a long time.  Don’t leave me hanging, please continue to join us on our amazing voyage!