Shore Acres Shoreline, OR

Welcome to new followers, Sue and Doug.  I joined their blog, Big Dawg and Freeway, after reading about them on Margie's blog. 

After our busy day on the jet boat yesterday, today was kind of a laid-back day.  We found some geocaches in North Bend.  Then we explored the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area north of North Bend.  We were amazed at the number of dune buggies, ATVs, and RVs that were camping and visiting the dunes. 

This geocache was a plastic bottle that was camouflaged well.

When we were at Shore Acres State Park on Thursday, I took a few pictures of the rocky shoreline there.  We were there in the morning and the marine layer made the coast foggy. 

This was once the Simpson’s family private beach. Now it’s part of Shore Acres State Park and you can hike down to it.

Below are some views of the coast from Shore Acres Park.  You can see that the fog was lifting, but the sky was still not blue.

We have enjoyed our time at the southern Oregon coast.  Tonight we talked with our friends, Tom and Cindi, about where to go for next summer’s trip together.  So many possibilities, so little time!

Thank you for reading my blog.

Armitage County Park, Eugene, Oregon

I would like to welcome my new blog followers, Kimberly and Jerry.  Check out their blog, Hit the Road JACK. 

Yesterday was our busy day touring the Washington State Patrol Academy in Shelton, Washington, northwest of Olympia.  Today we headed south instead of north.  We’re spending the night at Armitage County Park in Coburg, OR, which is just north of Eugene.  This is our first time camping here.  This park is 2.5 hours from our home.  It’s located near I-5, but we can’t hear any freeway noise.  The cost per night for our site is $25.

This campground has spacious, paved full-hookup sites with 50 amp power.  They have cable and free wifi.  We have Verizon cell service and we picked an open site so we have a good satellite signal.  We look forward to camping here again. 

One of several spacious pull-thru sites

We didn’t have reservations and picked site #12 after we got here. Wifi antenna on the restroom building behind our site.  Surprisingly, this park does not have showers. There are five geocaches located in or near Armitage Park.  We found three of them.  This is the first time we combined riding our bikes with geocaching.  It’s a little hard to do because the caches are usually not located on the road or bike path.  But riding the bikes saved us from having to walk all over the park to find the caches, and with bikes, we were able to explore the entire park. 

Armitage Park is located on the McKenzie River.  Here, in 1875, the first white woman crossed the McKenzie River.  Assisted by three friendly Indians, Mrs. Armitage and her husband crossed the river in their covered wagon and became some of the first settlers of the Willamette Valley. 

Pedestrian bridge across the McKenzie River From the pedestrian bridge, an eastward view of I-5 crossing over the McKenzie River  Armitage Park from the pedestrian bridgeTomorrow we head southwest from here and will meet up with our friends, Tom and Cindi, to spend a few days together in the Coos Bay, Oregon area. 

Thanks for reading!

Pioneer Cemetery

One of the geocaches we found in Lebanon, Oregon was located in a pioneer cemetery.  While Dave searched for the geocache, I spent some time looking at the gravestones.  Many of them were too weathered to be able to read the details.  A few had more modern headstones.  One of the older graves was for someone born in the late 1700s.  On his tombstone it said “War of 1812”.

This one was interesting because it showed that the person was born in 1794 and died in 1899.  If that’s correct, Margy Ann lived to be 105 years old!

This one resembled a wishing well and displayed the words “They are Not Dead” written on a Bible. 

Many of the stones displayed the age of the person in years, months and days.  In this case, Elizabeth lived to be 40 years, 8 months, and 4 days.

Another unusual design

Dave finally found the geocache in a tree stump.

This is an example of how geocaching led us to a part of town we wouldn’t have otherwise explored.  I could have stayed here all day looking at the gravestones and imagining the lives of the pioneers buried in this cemetery.

More pictures from Lebanon, OR

Dave is refereeing a semi-pro football game in Portland tonight and I am hanging out here at home. 

While we were in Lebanon during the holiday weekend, Dave and I found a few geocaches.  We’ve been looking for the easy ones and we usually find them, but not always.  One of them was supposed to be hidden at this old train depot which has been remodeled into offices.  We searched all over but couldn’t find the geocache. Another cache was hidden on a trail at Waterloo County Park which is not too far from Mallard Creek Golf Course.  Waterloo Park is always busy when we are there.  The park recently added a disc golf course.  The park offers several group day use areas as well as a camping area.  Some of the sites have water and electric hookups, but no sewer.  This geocache was called Alley Cat because it was located in an alley.This cache was located, of all places, near Safeway.  It was a bird-themed cache and was located in a tree in a cleverly-disguised nest.While we were in Brownsville, we saw this sign outside of a store.  It took three tries, but I finally got a picture of it that I liked.   One of the hanging flower baskets that decorated the town of Brownsville.

Ellensburg’s Central Washington University

 

This morning the wind had finally died down, so I was able to go for a bike ride.  I rode under I-90 and along Ellensburg’s Main Street until I was able to cut over to the residential streets.  I rode to Central Washington University, known to locals and students simply as Central.  

Our younger son, Jonathan, graduated from Western Washington University in Bellingham, which is known simply as Western.  There’s also an Eastern Washington University located in Cheney which is near Spokane.  These three are all state schools.  The other two state universities in Washington are University of Washington (UDub) in Seattle and Washington State University (Wazzu) in Pullman.  Our older son, Tim, graduated from the Vancouver, WA, USA campus of WSU (Wazzu). Anyway, I had a good bike ride and rode 8 miles altogether.  I rode up to the football fields, but didn’t see Dave.  I saw the high school football campers, though, as they came clomping back to their dorm rooms in their cleats.  Dave said there were 1200 high school boys participating in this week’s football camp and there’s another football camp beginning this weekend.  Also being held were girls’ volleyball camps and cheerleading camps.

While on the campus, I came upon a Japanese Garden.  It provided a lovely, serene respite in the midst of a busy campus.

 

We looked for seven geocaches in Ellensburg and found only two!  I wonder if all college towns have such tough to find geocaches.  The clues were either too vague for us or there were no clues.  And I picked what looked like the easiest caches!  Many of the geocaches here in Ellensburg had several parts which each had to be solved in order by gathering clues at each cache.  We didn’t attempt to do any of those.  This cache was on campus at the ROTC dorms.  It was a fun, easy find.

Tomorrow morning we head for Alder Lake, a Tacoma Power Park located on the southwest side of Mount Rainier.  Thanks for reading my blog!

Visit with Margie and Bruce

Today was the day fellow bloggers, Margie and Bruce, visited us at our RV park in Astoria.   They drove up here after they arrived in Seaside this morning.  We had a wonderful visit.  I would say that we made some new friends, except that I felt like we were already friends because of following each other's blogs.  Even though we are not full-time RVers, we still had a lot in common with Margie and Bruce.  It was fun to swap stories of where we had been and what we had done.  They are easy-going, genuinely nice people.  The world needs more people like that! 

We went out for a late lunch to Wet Dog Cafe in Astoria which is located along the waterfront.  Dave, Margie, and Bruce had bison burgers and I had clam chowder and salad.  On the way out of the cafe, we located a letterbox, which is kind of like a geocache, except that it uses rubber stamps and doesn't depend on GPS to locate it.  Fun times!

After Margie and Bruce left around 5 pm, we decided to try to find a few more geocaches.  We went to the Warrenton Waterfront Trail.  We combined geocaching with a walk, and ended up walking a 5K, which I had been wanting to do.  I didn't plan on doing it on a weedy, gravel path, though.  The path was supposed to be along the river, and it was, kind of, but it went through the marshy area next to the river instead.  We saw several blue herons and lots of other interesting birds.  The walk was good, but my feet and hips were very sore by the time we finished.  We found two of the three caches we looked for.

Astoria and Seaside, OR

We are quickly becoming addicted to our new hobby, geocaching.  While in Astoria, we found four caches yesterday, and seven today.  The first four of today's caches were found in Seaside, OR, which is about 17 miles south of Astoria on Highway 101. 

The weather forecast was for rain today, and we had rain overnight and this morning.  But by the time we got going on today's travels, the rain had stopped and the skies were starting to clear.  We made use of the good weather by doing our outdoor geocaching and sightseeing. 

One of the reasons that geocaching is so fun is that the scenery and setting is different for each cache.  Look at the pictures below and you will see what I mean. 

The first four of the above pictures were taken in Seaside, the last three in Astoria.

The pictures above are of the four caches we found yesterday in Astoria.  We were losing daylight by the end of the searches!

Flavel House, once home to one of Astoria's sea captains.

One of our searches led us to the roof of this hotel.  The reward was a great view of downtown Astoria.

Coming up tomorrow, we look forward to a visit with Margie and Bruce of Bruce and Margie's Full Time Journey!