3 Days at the Beach

Ahhhhh...the beach at summer time. What a wonderful place! We just got back yesterday, Wednesday, Aug 13, from three wonderful days at Cannon Beach. We had beautiful weather and all came home tired and sunburned, but refreshed.

We stayed at Wright's Campground. The Wrights are old family friends. Mom (Marie), as a young girl living in Portland played with Leroy, Barbara and Gail, the children of Roy and Norma Wright. Roy and Norma were very good friends and attended the same church as Harold and Varian Hendryx (Marie's father and mother), and they spent much time together as friends do. Years later Roy and Norma moved to Cannon Beach and in 1959 Roy opened his campground in the woods at the south end of town. The rest is history. Roy and Norma are now gone and Gail runs the facility with her grandchildren. It's a beautiful little park, and we had a good time and got to visit with Gail a bit and get caught up on the happenings of her family.

The beach was wonderful! We spent half a day at Seaside visiting the aquarium, walking the boardwalk, riding the rides (bumper cars, carousel, etc), eating ice cream, and ambling down the wonderful beach.

And then back over to Cannon Beach where we walked more on the beach, fed the seagulls, flew the kite, relaxed, ate at Moe's, watched Sasha chase the seagulls (pretty funny!), got sunburned and just had a wonderful time. And of course we built a fire on the beach and watched the sunset. There is something special about building a fire on the beach and watching the sun go down. I'm glad that is still allowed up north here.

We bought a kite at a garage sale a couple years ago. When I looked at it and saw the large spool filled with heavy nylon string I knew this was a serious kite. And it is! It is a foil style and pretty good size. The spool must hold a thousand feet of nylon twine. We have flown this kite several times, but have never been able to get to the end of the spool...until Wednesday! The weather was beautiful and sunny on Wednesday, but there was also a perfect strong consistent wind out of the northwest. The kite went up easily and continued to climb. Soon we were 'miles higher' than the other kits on the beach, and it continued to climb. I told Pam and Sara that today we were going to see the end of the spool,...and we did. I was a bit unsure as the end came in view if it was secured...not a good thing to lose the end of the string with 1000 feet or more out there. But it was tied securely. After 20 minutes or so at such a height we started the task of winding it all back in. We persisted and before long our 'high flyer' was back on the beach. What fun!



We also took in the incredible beauty of the Oregon coast. As you know if you have been there, the scenery is a feast for the eyes. In every direction there are clean sandy beaches strewn with driftwood, heavily forested hills framing the eastern background, the always interesting rock formations such as Haystack Rock and its Needles and all framed by the beautiful Pacific. You find yourself just wanting to take pictures all the time. Yet no picture fully captures it all. I will share a few that we took of our trip and then call it a wrap for this post.

Blesssings to all.

Walt, for the three of us + dog

[Click to get an enlargement of each pic]