Oregon Coast - 2nd Visit

 Unfortunately for mom and dad, we discovered the most amazing colors on the coast of Oregon after they left us. Beau specifically wanted to see the tidal pools on the Oregon Coast and after talking to a lady at the front desk of our campground, we simply walked across the street one early morning to go exploring. And look what we found!

Mussels galore! We were walking all over them! (Felt bad about that since they are living animals...but...)

And amazing starfish in so many beautiful colors! We'd never seen anything like it!

Oregon Coast - 1st visit

 You can tell by the title of this post that there must be an additional visit coming and you would be right! This first visit included mom and dad, which was fun. We enjoyed seeing the coastline, walking the beach, taking hikes up the steep hillsides and enjoyed rummaging through the driftwood and the rocks on the beach. 

We were also fortunate enough to come across a couple cleaning some clams at one of the campsites we were staying in and they recommended going clamming! What?!?! We can do that? For us east coasters, clams are something that just appear in the grocery store...having no idea how they actually came out of the ocean. But we quickly found out. 

What do we need? When do we go? Where do we go? What do you do with the stuff once you have it? Beau took off to research and get what we needed. And the next morning came early as we headed out to the beach, gear in hand. We were clearly the "newbies" as we were in sandals and everyone else was wisely in mud boots. Whew! It was cold!

And since they were successful, there was the cleaning!

Redwoods National Park

 One of the places I had been excited to see on this entire trip was Redwoods National Forest. Fun fact: Sequoia National Park and Redwoods National Park are both made up of Sequoia trees...there's just different species of Sequoias. But they're both huge and absolutely wonderful to walk amongst. 

Stops along the way demanded this one at the beach. I feel like my 6 year old looks 16!

One of the great things my mom found for us was a place called Trees of Mystery. It's an educational park in the midst of the redwood trees that has a ton of great activities. We enjoyed the "walk" through the tree tops, posing with Paul Bunyan and chair lift. 

 

This tree trunk is showing the monumental events in history and where they would be marked on age (rings) of the tree.

Naturally, a stop in the National Park was a must. And Junior Rangers became official here as well! One of the highlights of this park was an educational tour of the forest by this park ranger. Told us all about how these trees have to be at least 1.25 miles from the seashore, what happens and does not happen to them in a fire, how each tree when they fall to the ground goes to help feed and support new trees in the forest. We became lovers of forests and trees. Beautiful! This first picture is showing an elk rack that had grown into the tree or I should say the tree grew around the rack.