Spontaneous Whirlwind

This weekend ranks right up there with my honeymoon in Hawaii. It was spontaneous, exciting and totally exhausting! Levi got home from work on Thursday early. We have both had a really challenging couple of weeks full of possible change, lots of lessons, and a couple of closed doors that we almost certainly thought would be opened. So when Levi blurted out "let's go on a road trip down the coast" It was all I could do to hold myself back from packing my bags throwing Linc in the car and hittin' the road that night. We instead waited until Friday morning to take off. We headed south, camera in hand (lucky for you!). First stop was a cute, quaint little ocean overlook in Bandon with an awesome little mosaic bench which warranted the mamarazzi in me to shout, "wait I need a picture!".

Our next stop was the tallest bridge in Oregon, scraping the sky at over 300 feet tall! We took a hike down to a viewing area but, sadly, the view wasn't what I had hoped for. We had a great hike though and I managed to snap my way along the trail. Linc absolutely LOVED it and so did Levi. It is awesome having my own wilderness/nature tour guide. From horses tail to salaal, cedars to alders this guy knows them all usually in Latin as well as our lay terms! He knows the history behind non-native species and usually had a couple of off beat facts about the stuff we came across.




Back on the road, we continued down HWY. 101 to Gold Beach stopping at a GREAT restaurant to eat lunch. Levi had the best fish and chips I have ever tasted!! It was great. After lunch we headed to California! That's right we made it to the border but, not being too terribly fond of our neighboring state we quickly turned around and headed to the red wood forests in Southern Oregon:0) It was AMAZING! There were so many HUGE trees!! We walked into a hollow red wood and hiked around for about 2 miles. It was just stunning! Again. Levi shared his knowledge about the wilderness with Linc and I and again Lincoln just LOVED it! We cruised around Brookings for a while then headed back north to Gold Beach.

The hollow tree

As it began to get dark we went in search of a hotel... Ahhh the motel 6! Not exactly the cottages we stayed in in Hawaii but it was a great motel 6! We ordered pizza and I went on a pie run, the perfect way to end our day. We got up Saturday morning and ate breakfast then it was back on the road this time heading north. We had seen Humbug mountain trail when heading south and made a mental note that it might be a fun hike but after two, rather vigorous hike the day before my creaky 24 year old hips said NO! So we took a lighter hike out to a beautiful beach just adjacent to Humbug.

My attempt at sun spots

Finally we drove back up to Coos Bay stopping at South Slough Estuaries to take one more hike before returning to reality. It was a muggy one! But well worth it! So as you can see the past couple of days have left me feeling like I have just been through a spontaneous whirlwind, 4 hike in two days... but it was the best weekend I have had in a long time and now that we have been "refreshed", Levi and I are ready to get back to the real world!