Our Summer Vacation around Oregon

Okay, we've already been back for almost a week, but I just now am able to blog about our trip we took last week. It was one of those vacations where you kinda need a vacation to recover from your vacation and also we took TONS of pics, as usual for us, and it took me forever to go through them and make a slide show. There are far too many for me to even post the best ones, but I will post a few of my favs. if you don't want to sit through the whole long slideshow.

We did leave the last day of July and headed south to Florence, OR along the coast. We camped 2 nights there in a the Jessie M. Honeyman State Park, which is a fabulous campground. Florence is not really your typical coastal town like we're used where you can see easily see the ocean pretty much wherever you are. Florence is the northern portion of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, and at our campground, we could easily get to the dunes, but to get to the water, it was an impossible 2 mile walk across the dunes. It makes me think of the horrible, torturous movie "Lawrence of Arabia" where the whole movie, they're just trudging across the desert. It would be "Lawrence of Florence" LOL :) Anyway, the kids did love to climb up and down the dunes, although getting up could be very difficult. Hannah, Justin and I actually did one hike up a dune that was SOOOOO steep that my legs and my lungs were burning by the time we got to the top. We did it just at sunset, though, and the view was gorgeous. Here are a couple photos from that excursion. Dale and Owen didn't go up because he didn't think we could get Owen up there. I was proud of Hannah and Justin for making it though.

Victorious!

The gorgeous expanse of dunes

The kids had a great time camping, and surprisingly, I did too. We think we might even be ready to do more camping. The kids loved roasting (or torching) marshmallows and making s'mores, riding their bikes around and just being in the great outdoors. We do need to get a few more things to prepare for more camping, though. We saw a lot of people who are SERIOUS about their camping.

We did manage to find the water at Florence. We had to drive there, and it was a hike up and over the dunes to get to it, but it was gorgeous. Again, the kids loved playing in the sand and also finding all kinds of shell treasures on the shore. Dale and I had a great time relaxing on the blanket just watching the kids.

Heading up the dune with their finds

Justin helping Owen up the steep dune.

Hannah's favorite find.

Our next stop after Florence was a little further south to another Coastal town, Bandon, OR. We just stayed there one night but it was a gorgeous stretch of beach that we had never seen before. There were lots of really cool rocks off the shore. Like Cannon Beach but on a much larger scale.

We loved walking along the beach and finding new shells, rocks, climbing on larger rocks and playing in the driftwood.

The gorgeous (although a little foggy) Bandon coastline

The kids posing in front of a cool sea arch in Table Rock off the shore

Just love this photo of Justin

Dale and kids with a cool giant tree root that washed up on shore

The next day was a long one. We left Bandon and drove about 2 hours east to Winston, OR where we visited the Drive Thru Wildlife Safari. Unfortunately, Hannah didn't feel too good during the drive--don't know if she actually had a touch of flu or just carsickness from the windy roads, but there was a lot of complaining this day. The Wildlife Safari was a little bit of a break, but it took us over 2 hours just to get through that. We did see some cool or interesting things as we drove through. Right at the start we came up to the giraffes and three of them were right in the road next to the cars. Two of them were dancing, or doing the "tango" as the kids called it. They were doing the tango alright. We almost had a little (or should I say big) health education lesson right there on the road. ;)

"It Takes Two to Tango"

This is just out my side window--they were close!

We continued on our drive and saw many other animals and then just as we were coming up on the elk and bison, the entire bison herd decided to walk onto the road and just stay there for 20 or 30 minutes. No cars were moving past them that whole time. Some of them got pretty close to some of the cars, and I was getting a tad bit nervous. Finally, they decided to move out.

Look at the huge guy strolling just a few feet away from our car!

We left the Wildlife Safari, and it was another 2 hours to our next destination, Union Creek Resort near Crater Lake. We stayed in a "rustic" cabin there right near Union Creek and the Rogue River. Dale and camped at the campground there years ago when we did a very similar trip before having kids. The Rogue River there is beautiful, and it is in close proximity to Crater Lake. Unfortunately, when we got there, Hannah actually got sick and really wasn't much up for doing anything the rest of the day, so we didn't do much the rest of that day. Thankfully, after a good night's sleep, she felt much better the next day. Unfortunately, though, then Justin didn't feel so hot. We did go to Crater Lake and got just a gorgeous view of it. You couldn't have been there on a better day with the bright blue sky and puffy white clouds and the gorgeous blue of the water (sorry Sharon and sisters--wish you could've seen it like this). Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States at over 1900 feet deep.

Crater Lake with Wizard Island

Last time Dale and I were here, we drove around the entire lake and hiked up to the top of the tallest peak overlooking the lake. Unfortunately, this time with Justin not feeling great and the kids not being quite as excited about the natural wonder as we were, we didn't get a chance to do that. We did a little drive to view a rock in the lake called Phantom Ship (can see a pic. in the slideshow) but then headed back to the cabin. We did do a little hiking back along the river where we saw Natural Bridge where the rushing Rogue River disappears underground in a lava tube and you can see it emerge on the other side. It's very cool. Plus we got ice cream at a cool shop at the resort.

After staying there two nights, we headed north to our final destination, Sunriver, OR, where we have vacationed the last 3 summers. The kids love it there and it was a very relaxing end to our vacation. We were there 4 days and really didn't have much planned besides riding bikes around the extensive bike trails and going to the pool. We stayed in a new place this year, which was extremely convenient right across from the Sunriver Village and a very short bike ride to the pool. And fortunately, the condo came with pool passes since it costs almost $50 for all of us to go to the pool one time. Since we had the passes, we went there all three days for 2-3 hours. We did manage to take one little road trip to see Newberry Crater where there are two lakes, waterfalls, a lava cast forest and some great views of the Oregon Central Cascades. We took the kids on a hike through the lava cast forest, which they thought was cool because they could find pumice and obsidian rocks to take home for their vast collections. Then we did just a short hike to some waterfalls, but by then, they were about done. Hannah especially I think was going to go crazy if she heard the term, "scenic vista" from Dale one more time. Their only concern was getting back to the pool.

So all in all, it was a fabulous trip, but after 9 days, it was exhausting, especially with all the moving around. We managed to pack a lot in that 9 days even with 3 kids in tow. Next year, we might tackle a tour around our own state of Washington or maybe even a trip to Yellowstone.

One last "scenic vista" of the Central Cascades

Of course, I had a ton more photos and here is a slideshow of just my favorites.