Since our schedule was an hour ahead of the Washingtonians in our group, we were up and dressed and out on the beach waiting for them to finish getting ready for breakfast on Friday morning.
On our way to breakfast, we stopped for a few family pictures. If you have ever been to Seaside before, you'd recognize this turn around spot. Traffic was backed up a bit while we took pictures, but they didn't seem to mind too much. Can you believe my oldest two are almost as tall as me? Crazy.
We spent a couple of hours at the beach after breakfast before we had to check out. We had fun playing frisbee, digging in the sand, and searching for whole sand dollars.
We weren't successful with the whole sand dollars and all of the females in our family need to work on their frisbee skills, but it was an enjoyable way to spend the morning. Amy and Misha begged to play in the water. I finally relented saying, "Don't get wet. Roll up your pants!" Yeah, famous last words.
After checking out, we were waiting for Uncle Roger. I sat with the girls in the car watching this mom trying to corral two young children. She enthusiastically started to march down the sidewalk calling out in a sing-song voice, "March, March, March...." Squish. "Awwww, who let their dog poop on the sidewalk!" Hilarious.
The rest of the day was filled with sightseeing excursions. We visited Fort Clatsop which was the wintering quarters for Lewis and Clark in 1805.
Funny story with this orange mushroom. Misha saw it and asked what it was. The first words out of my mouth were, "It's orange poop." Kids are so impressionable, so I quickly told her I was kidding. But you have to admit, it does look like orange poop.
We drove down to Astoria and crossed the Astoria-Megler Bridge:
The Astoria-Megler Bridge is a continuous truss bridge that spans the mouth of the Columbia River between Astoria, Oregon and Point Ellice near Megler, Washington, in the United States. The span was the last segment of U.S. Route 101 between Olympia, Washington and Los Angeles, California. It is the longest continuous truss bridge in North America.
We then headed south toward Cape Disappointment to view the lighthouse there and then on to see the North Head Lighthouse. It was rather chilly at this lighthouse, rather indicative of a normal day at the coast.
Amy was a little miffed at her father. She was using one of the port-a-potties when Chris came up and starting banging on the door. He and Grandpa thought about trying to tip it, but thought better of that BAD, BAD, BAD idea.
The hike to the lighthouse at North Head was more strenuous though the weather was much more pleasant. We passed an amazing little inlet on the way.
It was time to head back to Grandma's house. We drove to a little town called Clatskanie in Oregon; dining options were limited so we finally decided upon the oddly-named "Hump's" for dinner. I'm pretty sure we went over some hills and through a lot of woods to get back to grandmother's house.