Day 56: Florence to Canyonville, OR

We woke late this morning under the shade of enormous trees. Our campsite was cool and quiet; the boys slept soundly to 9am!

After a hearty breakfast of eggs and breakfast sausages, our first stop of the day involved heading across a stone drawbridge and past an enormous fish to get to a Free Little Library, I needed to trade in my finished novels for something new to read. A murder myself caught my attention; hopefully it turns out to be a good book.

Next we stopped at Sand Masters to rent sand boards and sleds with accompanying helmets. This was the boys’ first “first” of the day. They gave it a great effort for about an hour when they got tired from trudging up the sand hill as the adrenaline of the descent waned. Time for something new!

Even Daddy gave it a shot and managed not to injure himself! It looked dicey there for a second.

Our second “first” for today happened at Torex ATV rentals where we drove ATVs over the Oregon sand dunes. It was pretty crazy. After a comprehensive safety briefing and many, many consent forms and liability waivers were signed, off we went. This was the boys’ first time driving anything - ever. With that framing they did really well. The big boys figured out how to switch from neutral to first, second and third gear pretty easily. They drove carefully but had fun, even if they all got stuck in the sand many times. It felt a bit like participating in a real life version of Mario Kart.

Stuck!

Stuck again!

And again…

Alistair, on the other hand, holy smokes! There is a reason they don’t allow seven year olds to have drivers’ licenses. He was driving a mini ATV and was actually a decent driver but his ATV had tiny wheels and wasn’t powerful so he kept getting stuck and stalling. Over and over and over - at least a dozen times over the hour. And he couldn’t get started again independently, so it was a lot of Ian and I freeing him and getting him going again. It turned out to be (super duper) frustrating for everyone involved. About halfway through we couldn’t get his machine started after another (maybe the hundredth) stall and had to call the rental company for help and then wait on a sand mountain being pelted by blowing sand for help to arrive. On the bright side we all got some free exfoliation. When it was finally time to head back, I looked farther up the trail we were driving back to return our ATVs only to see Ali zoom off the trail and right into the bushes. Good grief. Ian and I wrestled the mini ATV back on the trail and no harm was done to either Ali or the ATV but my nerves were certainly shot. True to form, the boys LOVED it, especially Seamus. I, however, am going to need a few days to recover from this adventure.

Sleeping tonight is in the parking lot of the Seven Feathers Casino in Canyonville. We are off tomorrow to Cave Junction.

Day 55: Nehalem Bay State Park to Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park, OR

Oregon is quite possibly the most beautiful state. The combination of coastline and cliffs, forests and farmland, it is practically perfect. It has also been gorgeously sunny since we’ve been here which works very much in this state’s favour. And it has lighthouses! And seafood! The list goes on and on.

We were up early this morning to catch the very low tide. It was clamming time on the Nehalem Bay mudflats. We had a blast treasure hunting for soft-shell clams. We found 100! We also dug up some unexpected crayfish that also live in the same area - weird! We put those back. We wrapped up cramming just as the tide turned and headed back to pack up camp.

Treasure!

Our next stop - with hundreds of other tourists (we’re not sure where they all came from) - was Tillamook Creamery. This is a large scale, highly automated cheddar cheese factory. On the self-guided tour, we learned about their cheese production process from sourcing milk to shipping vacuum sealed cheese to a wide array of grocery stores across the USA. We sampled cheese - the truffle cheddar was my favourite; it tasted like garlic bread! What an impressive operation.

Inspired by a Canadian.

Samples!

Ready to learn about how a factory makes cheese.

Next we stopped at the Blue Heron Cheese Company, which was just down the road. It was a bit of a letdown but the kids liked the petting zoo, though the animals were very uninterested in the snacks we purchased from the gift shop for $1 for them. They much preferred the fresh green grass growing just beyond their pen.

Our afternoon was spent searching for a different type of shellfish - Dungeness crabs! We rented three crab rings near Lincoln City right in time to catch high tide at 3:00pm. We tossed the rings in the ocean from the beach beside the pier behind Mo’s Restaurant. This was great fun. We caught dozens of small but feisty crabs, three almost keepers, and one male crab of sufficient size (our lone keeper). Ian was fantastic at sending the pots sailing into the surf and the boys took turns pulling the pots back in every eight or so minutes. We used chicken drumsticks as bait, which worked great except two were stolen off the beach by sneaky seagulls the minute our backs were turned. One was snatched right out of a crab trap and one out of our ziplock storage bag which the bird managed to open. Crazy but hilarious. Seagulls are such scrappy birds.

Let her fly!

Just a boy waiting to catch a crab.

Ali holding his first crab - upside down to keep him calm so he doesn’t pinch.

Haul!

We caught one! Woot! Woot!

Here is our keeper.

I caught five in one net!

Chicken thief.

After returning our pots, we continued down the coast, past Heceta Lighthouse to end up in campsite 328 G at Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park. We steamed up our clams and crab and had an ocean inspired feast. What a day!

The clams were huge!

All steamed up. The crab was delicious.

Ali is pretty excited to try the crab. He was vibrating.

YouTube explains how to clean a crab.

Seamus feasted on the claw meat.