This is our YURT. It was camping in luxury!
We woke up to a beautiful blue sky and loaded everyone into the car to head to the beach and this is what the day turned into. It didn't stop us from enjoying the Peter Iredale shipwreck and flying our kite.
Here is Jonas at the beginning of our beach outing...
and here is Jonas at the end of our beach outing...
Once we were all loaded in the car and warming up, the blue sky came back, go figure!
Here we are at the south Jetty, which is under construction. They had the most gigantic boulders/rocks there I have ever seen. This picture was taken at the viewpoint that is still open. A couple were up there with us and they asked if they could take a picture of Jonas because his face was soooo dirty. Of course, when we tried to get it on our camera, all we got was the top of his head.
Ok, here is the messy face. It is the product of a 2 year old and black licorice combo.
These are just random pics of Battery Russell. It was so much fun to explore.
After exploring the battery, we took a little nature walk and Bryant found a cute little walking stick. He's ready for the long haul...
This is one of the sweetest memories of the trip. After roasting marshmallows, the kids weren't ready to go to bed yet, so they sat on my lap and we sang campfire songs for about an hour.
Our first night there I cleaned up dinner and brought all our fruit and unwrapped food into the yurt. As we were saying our family prayer Ethan and I noticed this weird sound outside. When we were closing the door after laying the kids down Ethan jumps back into the yurt and whispers, "There's something out there...it growled at me." My heart started to race, the kids were really confused and asking questions and Ethan was trying to look out the window on the door to see what was out there. Well, it was the friendly neighborhood raccoon, "Oh, there's two of them, no a whole family...at least three" Ethan tells me. So we go out to get all our packaged food and our garbage bag, well, one of those raccoons wasn't going to give that bag up without a fight. He ran under our yurt and then wrestled with the bag until he was satisfied he wasn't going to get it. It was hilarious! Although, my heart didn't stop racing until I was asleep.
So, night two, Ethan wanted to wait up for our coons and take a picture. They all three came in turns, we figure they were doing their normal routine and found a jackpot at our place (they ate 1/4 of a brand new loaf of bread). The growling was probably at one another and not at Ethan. We were a lot "closer" to nature this trip than ever before.
We went to the main base of the fort the next day. Here they have a museum and LOTS to look at. Here we are during a tour on an old army truck around the whole 3 mile base.
This is a replica of the guns that were used to defend the fort's position. That's a big gun.
More random battery shots
The cutest baby in the world...
We decided to drive up to Washington to find Cape Disappointment lighthouse (having heard about it across the river at the fort). We hiked up and along the way we found these treasures.
Here is Dead Man's Cove, Ethan's favorite view of the hike...
And we made it! This was probably the highlight of our entire trip for me. It was beautiful and invigorating! Look Grandma, "Crossing the Bar"!
The lighthouse is still in working order, so there aren't tours, much to the kids' dismay.
A nice shot of the lighthouse
Saying goodbye to the yurt was very sad for the boys. They enjoyed it up to the point when we drove away.
We went to Seaside as our final stop on our family vacation. Once again, the beach and the kite flying was super fun! Bryant said that flying his kite and swinging at the beach was his favorite part of our trip. The boys, as always love having the waves chase them.
Well, there you have it. Do you feel like you were there with us? Sorry for the lengthy post, we just had such a fabulous time that we kept taking pictures. I couldn't resist.
