| Watching Debra and the boys from up the hill | Nice splash! | “Here’s my bucket. Now what?” | Walking along the surf | Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach is well-known, but there are similar out-croppings all along the coast | Pretty well built-up for an out-of-the-way town |
| Seagulls might be “rats with wings”, but they are still birds and very interesting to watch | Another long shot | In flight | Looks like fun | The tides carve interesting and fun channels over the beach | In spite of the summer season, it was cold…but that didn’t stop these guys from playing ☺ |
| Guinness | Flynn on the run | Guinness not far behind | Good times | Debra gets in on the action | At some point, there’s just no point in trying to keep the shoes dry |
| Or the pants, for that matter | The beach is divided by a rock face jutting from the shore | So someone cut this tunnel through to provide access to the other side | At the end | The other side | A big driftwood log |
| Barnacle-encrusted mussel shells | A pretty amazing conglomeration | The surf washing over the rocks made this really wonderful sort of clattering noise. You can’t hear it in this picture, but if you click here you might be able to. | Innaias’s Babyhenge | He might have gotten a bit wet too | Yes, that’s Granny Tan in the background |
| The Tans take a walk | Innaias and Kong hanging out | More sand digging | Got the whole group together | It’s tricky getting just the right sand/water mix | Oceanside is not far from Tillamook, so of course we had to go see the air museum |
| This is the old helium pump room, used to move helium into the blimps hangared here | There are lots of unusual aircraft types here, including this Bellanca Aircruiser | The boys with the P47 | They also have a Catalina, apparently with one propeller out for service | Grumman’s first “flying boat”, the J2F-6 Duck | Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon |
| It’s hard to convey just how cavernous the blimp hangar is. It’s big. Really big. | There’s a little WWII diorama to one side | Kong checks out the Mustang | Flynn helps show Innaias around | Looks like Granny Tan wants to learn to fly helicopters | Of course, our trip to Tillamook is incomplete without a trip to the dairy |
| Tillamook cheese is made here | This is the packing floor | Worn out | Back to the surf, before it gets too dark | Birds again | Got the kites out |
| Guinness’s little triangular box kite flying high | Innaias looks a little warmer here | Giving the kite some encouragement | It takes a crew to fly a kite | Watching closely | Flynn’s kite did pretty well too |
| Guinness and Kong dealing with fickle winds | We stopped in Astoria on the way back | The maritime scene from the shore of the Columbia River | Just one of many tug boats needed to handle the shipping traffic in and out of the river | Kong, with the Highway 101 bridge behind | Freighters |
| It’s very inefficient time-wise, but we love taking the Cathlamet ferry rather than crossing the river at Portland on I-5, or even the bridge at Astoria | The crossing is only 10 minutes long or so, and the ferry itself is tiny | They have room for maybe a dozen vehicles on a good day | The view from the middle of the river does not disappoint | The Washington-side landing is actually on Puget Island | The dock is new since the last time we crossed here a couple of years prior |
