The Crescent City CA hotel did not provide breakfast so we went down the street to a fast food joint. We got our morning dose of humor when an older gentleman was trying to order a bacon cheeseburger for breakfast; the employee tried unsuccessful to explain they are only serving breakfast. Apparently anything with bacon on it qualifies as breakfast in his book. He walked off muttering about going to Jack in the Box because it's easier.
As we were leaving CA, we saw the fields of Easter lilies; this is where the majority of America's lilies are grown. Even though it wasn't the right time of year for them to be blooming, there were a few random blooms confirming it was the lily fields- cool to see. We were watching for the cranberry bogs near Bandon OR but didn't see any. We saw a produce stand advertising fresh blueberries but not in enough time to stop; we figured there would be more later but that wasn't so we missed that pleasure. We went through the [only] area where myrtlewood grows but didn't stop to buy anything.
It was 53* in Oregon -such an extreme switch from the first 2 weeks of our trip.
The OR coast is breath-taking beautiful.
Around noon we arrived at SpinReel Rentals. We had to sign contracts and take half an hour of safety training before we were allowed off the lot. They lay on the warnings pretty thick, but when we got out on the dunes all we needed was a little common sense.
We rented a quad for each of the kids and a 2-seater for R & I.
We had SO MUCH FUN!!! The hour went by so fast. We tried to extend for another hour but the machines were already booked. The OR Dunes were so much more fun than the CO Dunes because they weren't miserable hot and we were not trying to walk up them. The pictures don't do justice to how steep some of the dunes were and how much fun it was to go zooming down them. Or the challenge of trying to climb straight up them without getting stuck. We had to get a smaller quad for A because she is a minor but once she got the hang of the 2-wheel drive she did great.
We have 100% agreement this was the absolute BEST day of the whole trip! Everyone was in a great mood when we left North Bend. We are positive we need to go back to OR just to ride dune buggies again. If you ever get a chance to go to Oregon, do NOT miss the opportunity to ride the sand dunes. It's worth every dollar [eg. the many dollars], in our opinion.
We continued on up Rt. 101, stopping at a couple of lighthouses along the way.
We were not there at the right time or day of the week to get a tour inside any of them, but I have been inside lighthouses before so I was okay with that.
We arrived at our hotel in Lincoln City around 5:30pm. Again we had a family suite; I should have taken pictures because it was the nicest room we had on the whole trip but this is the only one I took in the room-
The first order of business was to find food. I was absolutely sure I had to eat west coast seafood- Dungeness crab in particular- on this trip but my hubby is seriously allergic to shellfish and most of my kids turn up their nose at it, so we had to find a place that had something for everyone. We ended up at Mo's.
JS tried the crab and agreed it was good but he didn't think it was worth having to crack & dig for that small amount of meat. He had the chicken alfredo; R & JR had burgers and A. tried the chili in a sourdough bread bowl. We found out the west coast sourdough bread really is sour. JR had a piece of Snickers pie, and the rest of us shared a slice of peanut butter pie.
A & I walked across the street from our hotel to the beach for sunset.
This is where we got our feet wet in the Pacific Ocean.
They had the most gorgeous blue hydrangeas growing everywhere in this part of Oregon.
I lugged laundry up & down 4 flights of stairs and spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the stuffy little guest laundry of the hotel so we'd have clean clothes to wear again.
to be continued...
