Lincoln City August 15-21

Monday august 15th we went back to Lincoln City again. This time we stayed a week and it was even more vacation-like. For the first days we didn't do much but hang around the pool and on the beach. And we tried the hotel's cocktail mixing skills which weren't disappointing at all. Wednesday Sita and I went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium where Sita once again displayed her extraordinary love for sea otters (which I must admit are quite fun to look at). Thursday we toured down highway 101, which is a north-south highway along the Oregon coast that has a nice ocean view almost all the time. We went south to Florence where we visited the world's largest sea cave; Sealionscave. And yes that does mean there are a lot of sea lions there, they're just not in the cave, but right outside of it. Well there was one in the cave but compared to the tens of californian sea lions outside that's nothing. After this stop we went further south and stopped at the Oregon Dunes Area. A huge area with high sand dunes where all the real Americans can have fun with their outrageously big four wheel drive cars and small dune buggies. Since we didn't have an outrageously big fourwheeldrive car we walked up the dunes which appeared to be harder than it seemed. But when we arrived at the top puffing like a ... (hm, does anyone know something that puffs really hard; besides an old steam train or a woman in labour?) it was really worth it.


Friday we wanted to do a similar tour north. First take a look at cascade head, a conserved nature area with a great view and then maybe move on to Astoria or Tillamook. Well, we kind of underestimated cascade head where we spend 5 hours hiking from the foot of the mountain to the top and back. After that we were kind of tired so we skipped the rest of the plans. Cascade head is a part of the cascade mountain range that covers the northwest of the USA from california to canada. Cascade head sticks out into the Pacific at the point where the salmon river enters the Pacific, which offers a great view. Unfortunately it was really foggy when we were there so we couldn't see very far but the weird sight of a fog covered Pacific was pretty cool too.

On saturday we visited the Tanger Factory outlet stores in Lincoln city cause Sita needed shoes and wanted to buy a skirt. Being a woman as she is, we came home with a reasonable amount of clothes, but none of them could be called shoes nor skirt. Still it was a pretty succesful trip and even I bought some clothes more exciting than socks (which was the only thing I bought there last time) . When we came back we met up with Martin, Angee and the kids on the beach and we all walked to Mo's for dinner. After that we got same great icecream and walked back to make a fire on the beach and there were s'mores for everyone this time.

Sunday we packed everything up, went for a final swim in the pool and headed home. Sita and I stopped by the Tigard mall and finally got her a set of shoes. Before we went to bed we had some Taco Bell's (which should definately open some locations in the Netherlands) and watched Sleepless in Seattle, which is actually kind of a booring movie, but Sita and I were to go to Seattle the next morning so the views of Seattle were a nice preview.

The best news that evening was that Ian found a car and when all paperwork is done I can drive my '90 Honda Accord....

More great pictures can be found shortly on my photoblog...