Day 1 of the Loper "Stay"cation

Day 1 of Stephen's break was fantastic! We began the day by driving up to Astoria to see the buildings where they filmed parts of the movie "Goonies". We saw the two houses that are shown at the beginning, the museum where the dad works, and the county jail. It was pretty neat. We also went up to see the Astoria Column. It was closed for maintainance, so we didn't get to go to the top and see the view which promised to be amazing. That was a bit of a disappointment.

After seeing the column we drove south on the 101 on our way to Cannon Beach. We actually stopped in Ecola State Park where we were able to see the famous Haystack Rock in the distance. It is the big one out in the water.

We took a hike (between 1.5 and 2 miles) from the parking lot down to the beach. It was so pretty walking through the forest and feeling a thousand miles from anything. This is one section of the trail that I thought was cool because it had a wooden staircase.

Once we got to the beach we were pretty warm. It was not hot there today, but because of our exersion we were able to stand the coldness of the water somewhat. It definitely took some getting used to, after all the Oregon Coast is known for its warm water. We didn't go out very far, only about to our knees, but it was so much fun. Here is Stephen working on our tide pool. We wanted to see what organisms would stay in our pool of water after the waves receeded.

Here is a video of our tide pool. Sorry about the camera work, I am not used to filming yet. If you look close you can see some of the little organisms swimming around.

Here is a shot of me playing in the water. I was having so much fun!

This is a little cover that we found as we were walking along the beach. It was a perfect day to be there because the beach was virtually empty. It was like our own little secret finding this cove. It would not be a good place to be caught in when the tide came back up, but we found it at the perfect time.

We ended our adventure by eating dinner at Mo's. It is a seafood restaurant that we really like. It is right on Cannon Beach. I had a perfect view of Haystack Rock outside the window to look at throughout the meal. I had halibut fish and chips with a small cup of clam chowder and Stephen had a bread bowl with clam chowder. We both loved mine, but Stephen's chowder was a little watery. The bread was fantastic, though. Overall, it was a fabulous day.

p.s. In case any of you don't know, a "stay"cation is a vacation where you stay where you live and visit local attractions. They have been promoting them on the radio here quite a bit this summer as a way to conserve gasoline consumption because of the high cost.