Oregon...

We had a great time in Oregon at the Tillamook Cheese factory, the rainy cold beach in Lincoln City (where we saw a huge group of harbor seals), the outlet mall (it was raining), Munson Creek Falls (an impressive 319 feet tall), The Octopus Tree and Cape Meares Lighthouse, and the beach view cottage we rented where Andrew and I nearly beat the "Incredibles" game for PS2 (we had to stop because it was like 1:30am and I had blisters on my thumb).

Some highlights of the trip that you can see from the slideshow are:
1. The cheese factory where we ate great ice cream; saw the cheese we buy at Costco being made; and when asked if he wanted a picture with the cow, Clancy ran over to the nearest cow, pointed and "Moo"ed.
2. The crazy waves at the beach. Who would have thought we'd be wearing coats and doing a lot of inside things (like shopping) in June?
3. Making a sea turtle out of sand and rocks at the beach. Clancy gathered quite a few of the rocks himself, including the heavy one featured in a series of pictures. We weren't sure if that one would make it to the turtle, but Clancy is very persistent and quite a little beaver (just like his dad).
4. Munson Creek Falls. It is a beautiful place, requiring just a short hike on a trail with lots of vegetation and lots of butterflies.
5. Cape Meares Lighthouse. It is the shortest on the Oregon Coast, but I like that because you can get the whole thing in one picture. There are also some pictures of off-shore rocks that can be seen from the lighthouse. They look kind of wierd in the pictures, but that is because the whole rock is covered with birds (including puffins). Isn't there a poem about puffins..."There once was a puffin just the shape of a muffin..." (I'm sure Popa knows).
6. The octopus tree. This is a giant Sitka spruce that has 5 limbs coming out of the base (all the others are just really tall and straight trees with one main trunk). The circumference of the tree and all her appendages is 50 feet! Clancy demonstrated his true inner tree-hugger when he ran up and embraced the sign that says "Protect this tree" and flashed us a charming grin. Was he just being cute, or sending some kind of message to his parents about how we should treat our little "humble tree" (the meaning of Clancy's Chinese name), I guess we may never know.

We left Oregon at 11 am on the only sunny warm day of the trip and started the roughly 6 hour drive back to Seattle, and arrived home 11 hours later. I guess we didn't really want to get back to "real" life.