In my continuing write up of our trip to California in December, here is what I wrote about the day we drove to the coast and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The day we went to the aquarium, I wasn't feeling super great, so I didn't sleep very much the night before. I think I got about 2 or 3 hours of sleep since we had to wake up early to head out. Part of me didn't want to go, but I'm glad we went even though it wasn't as enjoyable as it would have been at optimal health. It's about a 3 hour drive, and we got on the road about 7 AM which put us at the aquarium at about 10. I'm glad we left early, because there were only 2 or 3 parking spots left and we nabbed one of them.
The aquarium was super cool. I think my favorite was probably the octopus. Usually, octopus just seemed to sit there huddled up in a ball. This one was moving around. The coolest part was that the octopus was orange and then it went and sat on a rock and turned grey. Sooo cool!
Here are some of our pictures from the day.
I had to get some shots in front of the ocean.
There was a section about tentacles. They even had a copy of Call of Cthulhu on display. I thought this picture was funny.
This is the octopus that changed to grey. I didn't get a picture of that, though.
Robyn taking a selfie underneath the tide pool.
I took a picture of Robyn taking a selfie underneath the tide pool. That's how we roll.
We ate lunch at the aquarium. I had a delicious clam chowder in a bread bowl. After we were done, we went walking around downtown Monterrey. I saw this pirate, and needed a picture with it. Robyn was super embarrassed to be taking my picture.
We didn't spend a ton of time in the downtown area. We quickly decided it was time to drive home. But I wanted to dip my feet in the ocean, so I made Robyn stop at the first beach that was on the way.
I thought it was cool to see all these birds at the beach. That was unusual for me. Apparently it's not abnormal in the norther part of California.
I had to dip my feet in the water, even though it was 45 degrees.
Looking out at the ocean. (Not really, I think I was taking pictures of my feet.)
Standing in front of the ocean.
Selfies are essential.
I had to take a selfie to send to Mellen to let her know I made it to the beach.
She sent me one back. So it was like we were at the beach together even though we were several hundred miles apart.
We only spent maybe 10 minutes at the beach. We got back in the car and headed home. I was so tired that I just went to sleep in the passenger seat. I told Robyn I might need a milk shake before we get home. In my head, I was thinking that Los Banos would be a good place to stop since it's about half way.
I went to sleep and woke up in Los Banos. I asked Robyn where we were and when she said Los Banos I yelled, "That's where we're supposed to get a milk shake!". I hadn't told her that was my plan, so apparently I sounded a little crazy waking up and yelling about milk shakes. But she loves me, so she bought me a milk shake despite my craziness.
We made it home just in time for dinner. (They had ordered pizza.) It was a good end to a good day.
After our adventures in Lincoln City, it was time to move on to the rest of our trip. We had enjoyed the relaxing beach condo so much that we were a little bit sad to move on. But we were also excited about the other things that we had planned.
We got up in the morning, packed our things and got back into road trip mode. We drove north toward Tillamook, but we had to stop off along the way in Neskowin. Neskowin beach has a fun little landmark called Proposal Rock. I don't actually know why it's called that. There were zero people making any kind of proposal when I was there.
However, if you've seen Neverending story, you'll note that it does look like the giant turtle Morla. If you prefer to call it Morla Rock, or just Morla, I could support that. However, it never rose out of the water or sneezed on us, so that was disappointing.
Robyn did make this cuteness in the sand. It was the closes thing to a proposal that happened.
After Proposal Rock, we continued our northern journey. We went to the town of Tillamook so we could visit the cheese factory. I just have to take a moment to talk about the fact that we drove by the high school, and their mascot is the cheese makers.
Can you imagine when they play other schools? They'll go up against eagles with giant talons who can spot their prey from a mile away, or lions that weigh over 400 pounds, have giant claws and can run 50 mph. They stand there holding blocks of cheese menacingly while these great predators eat them alive.
I'm just saying. It's not a very intimidating mascot.
Anyway, on to the cheese factory. It was amazing!
The most important thing you do at the cheese factory is to eat cheese and other dairy products. If you don't tolerate lactose, the cheese factory doesn't tolerate you.
We had the fried cheese curds and they were epic. Here I am demonstrating the stretchiness of the cheese.
Showing off my grilled cheese sandwich and my cup, which shows where we are.
There is a short tour where you can look through windows at workers in the factory. It's kind of like a zoo, if zebras and orangutans made cheese.
The real hero of the factory is the cheese slicer guy. You'll notice he is not pictured, because he abandoned his post! He is no longer a hero. He is a traitor to the cause.
This machine seals the cheese blocks into the plastic. It also looks like a terror from the deepest depths of the ocean.
After, the tour it was time for dessert. We clearly couldn't leave the factory without buying Tillamook ice cream.
Yummy!
After Tillamook it was time to head east to the Portland area. We have some good friends who live just south of Portland, and they were kind enough to let us stay the night with them. If you're ever in the Portland area, I highly recommend staying with the Glaziers. They have a comfy bed, they provide breakfast in the morning, and they might even let you play with a drone.
Me with the controls, and a drone floating behind me.
Look what a good photographer I am with the drone.
After playing with the drone, it was clear to me that I need one of my own. If you've been hankering to buy me a gift, just keep that in mind.
We had tons of fun with the Glaziers. We spent the evening with them and made sure to take precious pictures. We also kept Lisa up way too late since she had to work in the morning. Ooops.
Aren't we so precious?
The next morning we departed from the Glazier bed and breakfast and went backpacking. So stay tuned for that!
There's something you should know. Crabbing is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Although, you should also know that the crabbing I did was nothing like Deadliest Catch. It was not remotely deadly, and I really liked it that way.
We went to Taft Beach, which is just a couple miles from where we were staying in Lincoln City. That's the official place to go crabbing. The beach drops off pretty quickly, so you can cast into pretty deep water fairly easily. (I'm sure there are other reasons why this beach is great, but that's the main reason that I was able to observe. I also observed that I was able to catch a bunch of them, so there's that too.)
A friend of mine had loaned me the trap, so I took it to the beach and just did my thing. There was a nice family who had been there crabbing all day and a couple teenage kids took me under their wing and taught me how to work the magic.
The trap is basically a net with a hook in the middle. You put a piece of chicken (I used chicken legs) on the hook and you cast out the net. It opens up on the sea floor and then when you pull it in the net closes up and catches anything that might be chowing down. When you pull it out of the water, your job is to shout for joy at all the crabs you bring in.
It's not too difficult, but there was a little bit of a learning curve as far as figuring out how to aim your cast, figuring out how long to wait before pulling it in, and things like that.
The first time I cast it out, I pulled in one tiny precious cute little crab. Naturally, I took a selfie with it.
At first, I was so excited that there was anything in the net, that I took a picture with everything I got.
As time went on, I either get better at it (what I like to believe) or just got more lucky (a very real possibility). I brought in some pretty big hauls. Like this one below.
Here's a video of me bringing in some goodness.
You'll notice that Robyn told me to throw them back after I pulled them in. You are only allowed to keep males that are really big. (There's a certain size they have to meet, but I don't remember what it was exactly.) As my teenage friends were training me, one of the things they asked me was if I had a bucket. I told them I was just there for fun and wasn't planning on keeping anything. But I told them if I caught anything that was legal, I would give it to them.
It took me a good 90 minutes of casting the net, but I finally caught a Goliath sized one that was a full inch bigger than it needed to be. I got a picture with it and then gave it to my little friends.
They were super excited about it. They had been there all day (we got there in the afternoon) and they only had 2 so far. Mine was bigger than the 2 they already had.
After I gave them the big one, they made even more effort to give pointers to other newbies. I think they realized that helping others be successful was a good investment. (But I should note, that they helped me out before there was any promise of reward.)
But don't worry. Lest you think that I missed out on great seafood by not cooking up the crab that I caught, we went to Mo's which overlooks Taft Beach. We had delicious seafood and we didn't even have to cook it.
Robyn wasn't very into the crabbing, but she was much more into eating amazing clam chowder while we looked out at the beach.
That's the last of my writing about Lincoln City. But don't worry, there's more to come about the rest of our Oregon vacation.
Robyn and I recently got back from a fabulous road trip to Oregon. It was quite the adventure, and we had a fabulous time. Over the next few posts, I will chronicle some of the highlights of our trip.
The first destination on our trip was Lincoln City. Fun fact: Lincoln City, Oregon is really far away from Lehi, Utah. It took us about 14 hours of driving to get there. I actually really enjoy road trips. I love the time alone with Robyn. I love just putting it on cruise control and watching the world go by.
And, of course I love sing-along time.
Robyn prepared a packet of fun for the road. She had such things as Mad Libs, the license plate game, a list of get to know you questions and other madness. I should note, we rocked the license plate game. We saw the license plates of 45 states (including both Alaska and Hawaii), but we also did some extra credit and got 4 Canadian provinces. With our extra credit included we have 49/50 which is 98%, a solid A.
I told Robyn we should drive to the east coast to pick up the last few we needed.
I mentioned above that I really do enjoy road trips. However, the 14 hours to get out there was just a little much. (We did it over 2 days. We drove to Twin Falls, Idaho after work on Friday, but that was still 10 hours on Saturday.) When we pulled in to Lincoln City, I told Robyn that I was done driving for life. I made her drive the 1 mile from our condo to go out to eat. Luckily, I was over my hatred of driving by the next day so I was able to drive again.
Once the road trip part was over, it was time for the fun to begin. Lincoln City is such a chill place. Our condo was right on the beach, so we loved to just sit and look at the crashing waves. We opened the windows so the breeze could come in, and it was amazing.
This was one of our favorite things. It's like a picnic on the beach without the sand.
Of course, we loved relaxing in the condo, but I clearly wasn't going to be that close to the ocean and not get wet. One of my favorite things on this trip was waking up early while Robyn was still sleeping and going on walks along the beach to discover all the various forms of life.
I learned this is called a moon jellyfish.
There were some tide pools not far away. I liked to walk over to them and see what I could see.
A starfish chillaxing
An open shell where a mussel once lived.
Lest you think that Robyn didn't enjoy the ocean either, she did come to the tide pools with me once as well, it was just later in the day after she was done sleeping.
Just hanging out with a whole bunch of mussels.
I even got her to touch the ocean once.
Lincoln City was even amazing at night. As the sun started to get low in the sky, campfires started popping up on the beach near our condo. Naturally, we had to participate at least once. We just gathered drift wood on the beach, and we didn't have a ton of it so our fire didn't last long, but I feel we got enough of the experience.
I make this cute little baby fire look good.
Robyn makes it look even better.
I think one of my favorite things was watching the sunset over the ocean.
One night, Robyn captured the moon and venus shining in the sky during the sunset.
As you can see, Lincoln City was pretty fantastic. But probably the coolest thing in Lincoln City was when I went crabbing. So stay tuned for the next post when I tell you about that.
