September 1, 2015 Coastal drive down to Heceta Beach, Oregon

Today we drove down the Pacific coast from Ocean Park, Washington to Heceta Beach, Oregon.  Here are a few random images from along that drive.....

Bye bye, my sister!  Til next time!

BIG bridge over the Columbia River.

Good place for lunch......

Need any cheese?

We think this looks like a marshmallow farm.....

August 31, 2015 Cranberry Museum, Long Beach, Washington

Part of today's travels included the Cranberry Museum.   This is actually the Pacific Coast Cranberry Research Foundation, and there is both the museum and a walking of the cranberry fields.  Learned some things:  cranberries don't grow IN water, they just flood the fields at harvest time.  And they grow on vines, not shrubs.  This is a research farm so we saw lots of different-looking plots of vines, some with cranberries ready to harvest and some gone to weeds....

Not quite ripe for harvest.

This is what the vines look like.

August 29, 2015 Oysterville, Washington

Another adventure this day was a visit to the old town of Oysterville, founded in 1854.  According to signage, there were once 500 people living here.  The old buildings have been well maintained, and we wished we could go inside them, but they are all private residences. 

We had hoped to get some Dungeness crabs here for our lunch,
but ALAS:  the crab season ended 2 days earlier....  drat!

Beautiful old church, inside and out.

General store and post office.  Do you see anybody loitering?

We looked around in the cemetery, and saw multiple versions of these cylindrical headstones.
Never saw this before, wonder what the significance might be.....

August 29, 2015 Leadbetter Point State Park, Washington

One part of today's adventures was Leadbetter Point State Park.  Alas, the beach trail was under water (high tide), but we hiked a short way to see Willapa Bay.  We did see just a little bit of wildlife.....

Yellow slug.

Black slug with a radical design on it's back....

Bayshore.

Lovely fall-ish colors on the trail.

Ruthie, Nannie, Jimmy.

Ruthie, Bubba, Nannie.

August 28, 2015 Ocean Park, WA beachfront

We met my sister and bro-in-law here at Ocean Park, Washington and spent three days with them.  What fun we had!  The weather got dramatic when a big storm front came ashore with very high winds.  Of course my sister and I went out walking in the gale force winds and got sand-blasted.....

I'm in the aqua, she's in the pink.

It seemed safer to hold on to each other in that wind....

And here we are, back safe & sound.... after an unforgettable walk on the beach. 

The next evening, NOT stormy, we were beachwalking,
 and this nice lady and her horse Felicia and her dog Skipper came along....
We were astonished that she was wearing only a t-shirt and capri pants, and it was CHILLY out there!

On their way back, we noticed that she was running beside her horse, probably to get warm.

We also saw this guy flying his kite - actually, it was 15 small kites strung together.
He had a hard time getting all those strings untangled, but finally it went UP.

And here we are, walking away from the beach for the last time on this visit.
Our campground is to the left of those beautiful beach houses.

August 22, 2015 Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, Washington

Our second adventure of this day Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park, a place worth visiting multiple times.  This is our second time here.  We were horrified at the amount of smoky haze in these mountains;  the Paradise Fire was blazing on the southern side of the park.  Quite a difference from our visit two years ago.  But still, we went for a short hike and loved every minute.

Mount Olympus is in this picture, but you can't even see it because of the smoke haze.

Yellow-bellied Marmot.  They live up here. 

Marmots use the hiking trails, too.....

Mount Olympus is the three pointy peaks just right of center.
Best we could do, with all the zoom our camera has.

See anyone peeking out from behind a tree?

Mr. Strongman, bends a big sapling way over with brute strength!

At an overlook coming down from Hurricane Ridge we came across a small herd of deer.
Not the least bit afraid of humans, and actively looking for handouts.

The End!