Vacation, Day 1

Saturday night we finally made plans for our getaway.  We've been throwing around ideas of places to go for a month and hadn't settled on anything.  Partly because Grandma Skip was visiting Uncle Rudy and family instead of being home in California, and two other families we had thought about visiting were gone or busy.  Was it a sign that we are unlikable and destined to stay home?  Nah.  Let's go to the beach.  So we booked a place to stay in Cannon Beach, Oregon and we left Tuesday morning.  We made a stop in the Portland area to say hi to Uncle Rudy, cousin Heather, and Grandma Skip.  It wasn't a long visit, as Grandma was heading to the airport to go home, and Uncle Rudy is home recovering from a successful brain surgery.  

Our first stop on the coast was Ecola state park.  Look!  We found the ocean!

 One beach was unavailable (lame!) and the other path lead to a cliff and view of the ocean.  Well, we did not just pay $5 to look at the ocean.

 We climbed down the cliff.  Ok, it wasn't exactly a cliff, but it was sure tricky getting all the girls down.

 This place was deserted when we came down.  By the time we left, others had joined us down on this rocky beach.

When we were done, we had to climb back up.  This picture doesn't do justice to the climb we faced. It was steep and slippery and muddy and madness.

By this time, we could check into our room at McBee's cottages.  We were a block away from the beach, so we parked our car and walked down.

 Emma found this whole tiny sand dollar.

 We walked over to Haystack Rock to check out the tide pools.

 By this time it was really late and we were all hungry.  In a stroke of sheer genius, we drove to Safeway in Seaside to see what we could scrounge for dinner.  Our cheapness won out, and we bought a bunch of $1 or $1.50 tv dinners to microwave in our room.  So then we had to drive all the way back, and cook all of these meals and before we knew it, it was 7:45 and we were finally eating dinner.  The kids thought tv dinners were a treat.  (Gag me.)  Our room was a room for 4 people so the kitchenette had 4 forks, knives, and spoons.  We had to eat in shifts so everyone could use a fork.

Then we got out the sleeping bags for the kids, and got ready for bed.