A Day at the Beach

Gearhart Beach

So, graduation is fast approaching and we're starting to realize that we could be gone in as little as three to six months. There's definately a lot of Oregon things we wanted to do before we left. One of those things is to spend more time at the beach. We heard from some friends of a magical place called Gearhart beach. A beach where travelers need not park two miles away, unload and haul all their beach-going fare on foot for those two miles, and then haul it back once finished... oh, no. This beach was famed for allowing visitors to drive on the beach itself! I know the question burning on everyones lips right now, and yes, I did feel a little like David Hasselhoff from Baywatch. I can't speak for my wife, but I'm sure she felt a little bit like Pamela Anderson too. Well, maybe more like Yasmine Bleeth. Anyway, it was fun 4-wheeling on the sand.

It was July 5th and it was cold, rainy, and windy! A stark contrast to the near 100 degree weather we'd been "enjoying" weeks previous. Surprisingly, the beach wasn't all that busy.

And now some photo's:

There was this cool little "reef" of tall grass and wildflowers bordering the beach. It was quite lovely.

Getting ready for our picnic, we parked facing up-wind so we wouldn't be bothered too much by the pummeling gale. We enjoyed delicious peanut butter and jam sandwiches, grapes, Cool Ranch Doritos, and ice cold water.

This is a picture of my Sweetest Challene after a quick trip to the Loo. "Wait," you may be thinking, "I just saw pictures of that grassy meadow and I didn't see any nearby buildings, shanty's, outhouses, etc. I couldn't even imagine anything out there except maybe a lone hotel not 1.5 miles in the distance!" My reply to you? "What an astute observation!" Yes, Challene's need was just that bad.

Nothing says "Beach Fun" like throwing dirt on the car and yourself. Good times.

Except maybe an opportunity to smash someones pitiable attempts at a sandcastle. Even the makeshift moat didn't stop Josh from kicking the crap out of that thing. I've never been prouder! *sniff*

Ethan trying to make his own sand castle. Don't worry, Joshy smashed that one too!

Later, we travelled to Seaside to check out the aquarium. Disappointing? Well, we did pay $14 or so for Challene and I, but they did have a giant squid, octopi, and several playful, hungry seals. I think it was worth it. Joshy and Ethan wouldn't have anything to do with touching the starfish or anenomes. Well, that's not true. Actually, Ethan grabbed the very starfish I was holding above and nearly squished it to death. After a firm, but not overbearing, chastizement he refused to touch anything else.

See, I told you so.

Doesn't look like we got a picture of the seals, but there were 6 or 7 seals in a tank you could walk right up to. You had an option of buying a cut up fish to feed to the seals. As the 25 other patrons had paper bowls of stinky fish we opted not to. These seals have been pampered for far too long. One, I'll call him Tim, would sit there all cute like waiting with baited breath for someone to throw a fish-bit to him. Well, if no one threw anything before his internal timer counted down to zero, he would put both fore-fins in front of his body and splash the onlookers in a rather humorous and human-esque fashion. Challene was holding Ethan to see and she would duck behind him so as not to get wet. Ethan didn't mind a bit.

Another seal, we'll call him Hal, also had a "feed me" attention getter. He would roll on his side and smack his fore-fin against his voluptuous belly creating a makshift vacuum which invariably lead to a significant pressure differential. As we all know, that differential would resonate at particular frequencies easily audible to the human ear. In other words, he was clapping. Loudly. It, too, was humorous.

The aftermath of the day was, of course, two very dirty boys. So, here they are in the bath enjoying bubbles-a-plenty. Elmo's Wild Watermelon bath bubbles to be precise.

I failed to mention (but don't have the patience to amend the beach portion above) that Gearhart was riddled (rittled?) with sand dollars. We had the boys hunt for sand dollars as we strolled along. Most had been busted open by the bane of the shoreline... seagulls. As the seagull is NOT the state bird of Oregon I really wanted to kick one. Sadly, someone else must have tried the same thing before because they were awfully skiddish. Until I broke out the residual PB&J. They flocked to me like... well, like a flock of seagulls. Once one of them, let's call her Anjali, came within my sites. I flexed my knee, ready to strike, but after taking one look into that hungry little face and my heart was melted.

The above story is nearly true.

At any rate, we found a bazillion sand dollars on the beach. Well, they don't just come all white and pretty, oh no. You have to work for that. So, here is a photo of Challene and the boy's cleaning the sand dollars.

We never took a picture of our finished ones. They are beautiful, that's for certain. Here's an example of what one would look like.

Oh yeah, ours were looking just like this puppy... let's call him Raul.