Depot Bay

This summer we took a family trip to Oregon. We came up for 2 reason: Isaac's baptism and our trip to the coast. We look forward to our trip to the coast with my family every few years. This year we had a little cooler weather than our last trip, but it didn't stop the fun!

Wayne took Elli for a walk on the beach Monday afternoon before the storm cleared. Early that morning Wayne, my dad, my brother and brothers in law all went fishing for sea bass. Most of them got sea sick from the stormy sea, but they still caught their limit of 34 or 35 sea bass total. (I have pictures a little further down of the cooked fish).

Joel on the left was the most sea sick, you can see that he is still a little green in this picture. The man with the yellow overalls was their captain.

This is Drift Creek Falls. It was a beautiful hike with a really neat suspension bridge you had to cross to get down to the bottom of the falls. The kids were a little afraid of crossing the bridge, but they all did it. They were proud of themselves for being so brave.

This is one the the things Wayne was looking forward to the most. He has just casted out a crab trap into the ocean. The only thing he didn't anticipate was the horrible sun burn he got on the back of his legs. He remembered sun screen everywhere but there. He was pretty miserable the next few days.

While the boys all went crab fishing I headed down to the outlets to go shopping with my sisters. I found some great deals on some really cute things. That is one of the things I looked forward too! :)


Here is Patrick after he just pulled in the trap. You can see that there are several crabs dangling in there. They caught a lot of crabs, but only 2 were big enough to keep.

Elli enjoyed the Oregon dandelions, or at least that is what they reminded me of. They grew all over the place like dandelions do here at home.

This is one of the many tide pools that was a short 5 minute walk from our beach house. We went down at low tide nearly every morning and evening. (I doctored this picture a little to make it look like an illustration. I like how it brought out the colors a little more.)

This is a cute little crab near the tide pools, but don't be fooled by it's tiny size (only about 1 1/2") These little guys will draw blood when they pinch.

Another fun tide pool. There were star fish everywhere, and even more anemones and barnacles.

There were also hermit crabs, but they were hard to get pictures of because they would hide behind the anemones.

Here is one of the fish dishes, it was some kind of herb and butter fish. Some was baked, and some was grilled. Joel and Patrick made the fish for us.

I think this was my favorite fish, it was a Parmesan cheese crusted fish. YUMMY!!!

This was another great meal. Patrick made ribs, and Marnie made flank steak. We ate really well on this vacation, and we never went out to eat either! With cooks like Marnie, Patrick and Joel, who needs restaurants?!

We stopped at the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River on our way in to Portland. The kids were tired of the car and it was a great stopping place. In the pic they are watching the enormous rainbow trout.

We all enjoyed walking along the beach looking for sea shells. Noah found this huge muscle shell, it was a great find!

My mom and dad brought their kites. Oregon beaches are great for kite flying!

This was the beginning of Bradley's treasure collection. Only a few things made it home though, none of which were crab claws. (too stinky)

The is our beach house named Sheltering Pines. This is taken from the beach. The wooden stairs are just feet from the deck and take you straight down onto the beach. It was such a perfect location, and the beach house was really quite lovely! It has 3 bedrooms with king size beds, and 2 of those rooms had their own bathrooms. There were 2 more common bathrooms. The 4th bedroom had a bunk bed with another pullout, which was enough room for all but 1 of the older grand kids. The rest of the family used the 3 couches in the family room at night. It worked out really well! Next time we do this we are thinking of renting the house right next door so that there will be room for my my sister who couldn't join us this year.

This is the view from the deck of the house, and yes I doctored this photo too. I am enjoying learning how to edit my photos.

One of my favorite things to do on our trips to Oregon is go to the local blueberry farms to pick fresh berries. In total we picked close to 50 lbs of berries. It's hard to pass up when they are only $1 a pound. We took just under half of them to the beach house to nibble on and make blueberry sauce for ice cream, and the rest were frozen to bring home. Can you believe the size of this blueberry? It was super delicious too, I ate it right after I took the picture!

This is the fish hatchery again, it's one of the 9 foot or so sturgeons they have on display.

Thank goodness for the invention of portable DVD players. Bradley and Elli enjoyed their time in the car (around 13 hours) much more than they would have without them. We also bought us a new van which helped tremendously because Elli still needs her infant car seat when she is drinking her bottle. I was able to switch her over to the infant seat so she could have her milk and take a naps, rather than needing to stop every time she wanted her milk.

This was taken at my sisters house. The first van was Marnie's brother in laws rental (who came up for Isaac's baptism), the next is Marnie's van, then my mom and dad's and then ours. I guess white is the family color. We all bought them within a month of each other too.

This is Noah, Isaac and Bradley. We can't wait to come back again in a few years!