The Oregon Coast is just amazing.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is a running blog. However, I hope you’ll indulge me, if for no other reason than that I have taken tons of pictures over the last few days and been blown all over the place by the crazy wind gusts around here. I have a good excuse for not posting the last few days.

Wednesday was quite a long day. No running, but still a long day. Up at 3, at the airport by 5 a.m.  On a flight at 6:40, and in Chicago by 8:30. It may have looked very strange but I was eating a salad at 9 a.m.  My flight to Portland was delayed, but not by much, yet I didn’t actually leave the airport until after 3 p.m. But, I was on the Pacific coast by 5 p.m.!   When I saw a map last night, it was hard to believe I had literally flown from one side of the continent to the other.

First I have to say to Kara, if you are reading this, I am so jealous of you for the fact that you live in this state. Its natural beauty is just so amazing! You definitely don’t see a coastline like this on the East Coast!

Second, a note to everyone – if you are ever going on vacation anywhere, ask Lisa if she’s been there, and then ask her for advice on where to eat! And go! And what to see!  She advised me to have a meal at a restaurant called Tidal Raves, in Depoe Bay, Oregon.  Oh. My. God.   The view was AMAZING, the food was AMAZING and the service was great also. And, the price was just right! I would have thought that a restaurant in such a location would charge a lot more, but nope. It was even very casual on the inside.

A few things I noticed that are really different from where I live.  You would never see a sign near Boston that says “Exiting/Entering Tsunami Hazard Area”.  I also don’t get the signs that say “unmuffled engine braking prohibited.”  What in the world does that mean?

One funny thing that I saw that made me go “huh?!”  I believe it was south of Newport, and north of Yachats, there was a lodging place called “Cape Cod Cottages.”  Seeing as the Cape Cod that I  know is 3000 miles or so away, it just made me laugh to myself. I almost stopped to take a picture of it, but to be honest, I had already stopped a million times today and didn’t want to get blown by the wind for the next 2 minutes!

Only one thing I have not liked about the scenery – the clear cuts of the trees. I have no idea how they figure out where to cut and where  not to cut, but it really does spoil the beauty of a lot of vistas.  You look at all these amazing evergreens, and then “boom! a clear cut out of nowhere.”

I’m putting lots of my pictures on Bubbleshare and will load them over the next few days to here also.  I’ll try to put captions on them in my Bubbleshare account so you know where they are from (if I can remember it well enough) – all you’ll have to do is click on the pictures in this blog, and it should take you to my public albums.

My route:

I drove from Portland to Cannon Beach, OR first.  Cannon Beach is known for one of the huge rocks that sticks out of the water – Haystack Rock.  By the way, it amazed me on my first trip here, and it still amazes me now – how HUGE these rocks are that stand up from the ocean floor. You have to think of how deep the water is, and then think of how high they are standing, and have been for eons, would be my guess. (Actually I see its website says its 237 feet tall -  just hope my pics do it justice.)

From there, I drove on to Tillamook, which is known for its big cheese factory.  I had thoughts of driving on to Newport, but I am so glad I didn’t. I was dead tired, and didn’t want to waste not seeing some of the view because of driving it in the dark. Plus, being so tired, I didn’t trust myself to be driving on curvy roads in the dark. I remembered how close some of the roads run to the edge of the water, and that not all of them have guardrails either!   I did go into the cheese factory, during the last half hour it was open, and watched the folks below in the assembly line. It was pretty amazing seeing how everything worked, and the folks down below were nice – looking up occasionally and smiling at those of us gawking and taking in the whole thing.  I cannot imagine, though, how they can do the same thing all day long, day after day. I would certainly hope that they could change positions with others occasionally, otherwise I see lots of repetitive-stress injuries resulting! (Can you tell I did some personal injury law at one point in time?!)   If you are ever there and like ice cream, I suggest you make a stop. (I made Bill jealous telling him about this – unfortunately I can’t eat much ice cream so the tastiness of its creamery was wasted on me!)

Ok, I think I will end this post here tonight so I can get to bed, and then hopefully wake up in time to see the sun rise here in Newport, from my oceanfront room.  The sunset in Newport was awesome (pictures will be forthcoming, although I think there was what Lisa refers to as a “marine layer” so it might also be even better looking on other days!) (By the way, I wasn’t really sure what a marine layer was before today, as you’ll see in some of my pictures from around Tillamook – on the Three Capes scenic route.

And since this is a running blog, yes, I did run tonight but I’d be suprised if it was 2 miles. I was too excited to watch the sunset, and honestly, the wind here is just ridiculous. It blew my hat off my head, I had to sprint after it, and then when I ran on the beach for a very short time, I felt like I was running in place!