Cannon, Cops, and Cheese

Thursday morning we said our goodbyes to Gigi and Brett (Scott was already off to work).

Emily was not happy because we had to rush this picture (since Brett was off to VBS) and she still had waffle in her mouth. 

We were originally going to head down I-5 to Crater Lake, but we heard so many good things about the Oregon coast that we decided to take a detour and drive down 101 along the ocean.

First, though, we decided to stop by the hotel to see if they had found Haley’s horse. We talked to the manager and the woman at the front desk. They talked with the maid who had cleaned our room, and she said she had not found a stuffed horse. Sherri decided to go and find the cleaning lady to see if she could remember anything at all. No luck. The cleaning lady spoke very little English, so I went to talk to her in Spanish. I told her that the horse was very special to Haley and that I would go dumpster diving if the maid thought that maybe it was in the trash. No luck. We spent a good 45 minutes at the hotel trying to track down this special stuffed animal, and we were pretty bummed that it did not turn up. We left our contact information again in hopes that it would turn up, and then headed out of Portland.

Once we arrived at Cannon Beach, we had a seafood lunch, which was excellent. The restaurant had a great view of Haystack Rock

Our girls love to fly kites, and when they saw all the people out on the beach flying kites, they asked if we could get a kite. We tracked down the nearest kite store (thanks, interwebs!) and got a butterfly kite.  We went out onto the beach, which had some of the softest sand I've ever walked on, and put the kite in the air.

 

We love it when she doesn't have waffles in her mouth

After flying the kite and playing in the water, we walked back to our car. We were about 100 yards away when we heard our alarm go off. We trotted over to the parking lot where several people said that a bus hit our Excursion and then took off. Luckily, the parking lot was literally right by the police station. There was already a cop on the scene, and I started singing “Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?” 

The bus hit our side mirror, and there was only slight damage to our tank. We waited what seemed like hours to get the insurance information from the bus driver (who had been pursued and pulled over by another cop). Bad boys…whatcha gonna do? Once we were on our merry way, we started making our way down the coast.

Our next stop was Tillamook, Oregon. Yes, as in Tillamook cheese. I always thought Tillamook was the name of a company, but as it turns out, it’s a city in Oregon. They have a ginormous creamery where you can go on tours and see how cheese is made. 

Ok, look at the camera and say.........

This all sounded interesting until we saw that they sold ice cream. Ice cream is a whole lot more interesting than cheese, so we got some after-lunch dessert and wandered for a bit around the gift shop.

Bellies full, we made our way down the beautiful Oregon coast. The sun was glistening off the ocean as the waves tickled the pure sand on the beach. We continue to be awed at all the beauty our country has to offer. We stopped at one of the beaches and the kids ran around and played on what turned out to be our own private beach for the time we were there.

We could have stayed at that beach for a very long time, but it was getting late and we needed to make our way to our hotel.

We finally arrived at our hotel in Florence, Oregon and got a restaurant recommendation. We had dinner and then tucked in for the night.