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!
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| 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.
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| Stuck! |
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| Stuck again! |
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| 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.
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