Sand dunes along the Oregon Coastline

 

Left the lovely South Beach Campsite in Newport, south west of Portland after enjoying a stint down at the beach. As usual, our kids managed to expend a lot of energy and whilst doing this, Trev took some lovely shots of interesting things on the beach.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our plan was to go and see the touristy Sea Lion caves which is where you find all the sea lions and their cubs. Apparently the smell is supposed to be terrible, but tourists still pay money to go down the caves with a tour guide. On this day, however, we managed to save our pennies. When we stopped at a vista to take some photos of the coastline, a guy informed us that all of the sealions were sunning themselves on the rocks below us and none were in their caves. That was a stroke of luck meeting him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We drove on through a town called Florence, where we stopped to do some shopping. As luck would have it, we were parked right near some sand dunes, so the children had fun sliding down the dunes any way they could.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They had so much fun that we stayed there longer than planned and ended up finding a campground close by called Jessie M Honeymoon Campsite. There were heaps of ATV’s there. For you Aussies, that simply means 4 wheeled motor bikes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Had to do some running repairs on the kids’ longboards, so went back into Florence to get the necessary parts. We decided to hire some sandboards and a sand sled. Went back to the sand dunes to practise how to use them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks a little like surfing, but without the water. And when you fall, your feet stay in the straps, so you come down harder. Trev was testament to this as he fell many times. However, the old saying “Never give up” is very apt in this case because it wasn’t long before everyone (except Kit, Chayse, Akaisha and I) were up and surfing the sand! Kit managed to master the sand sled and had a great time following the others as they traversed down the dunes. Chayse spent most of his time sliding down on his bottom, but seemed to have a ball anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stayed at a lovely campsite called Woahink. It was situated right on some sand dunes, so the kids managed to continue their sandboarding and I managed to do 4 loads of washing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning before leaving, the kids had another session of sandboarding. The injury list continued to grow. The day before Jai had hit his head and nursed a headache for a while. Trev had fallen hard and hit his ribs (which ended up being sore for another two weeks) and Kaitlin managed to twist her ankle and needed me to rescue her across miles of sand dunes (I’m sure it wasn’t that far, but supporting a teenage daughter who is a foot taller than yourself as she hops back to camp certainly made it feel that way!). In case anyone’s wondering, all injuries sustained have now gone and good health returned.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We dropped the boards back in town, then continued South. We stopped at Coos Bay where we made the decision to continue along the coast rather than go inland to see the Wildlife Park. Went sightseeing along the way and finally stopped at at a place called Gold beach. It was right on the beach (as well as in town) and was also in the hazardous Tsunami zone. You can see where the next blog might be heading, but I’ll leave it up to Trev to talk about the topic of Tsunamis in the next blog. Until then………….