Oregon Coastal Fun

June 20^th-23^rd

Moving on from the beauty of the Oregon interior, we started our trek towards the coast on the 20^th of June. Over my lifetime, I have made a lot of friends with my various hobbies. One friend is Carolyn Wray, a Poodle lover, fellow member of Versatility in Poodles, and AKC obedience and rally judge. I had the pleasure of showing under Carolyn with Jazz when she was a young dog, so we had met in person once before in Belton, TX I believe. When she found out we would be driving within a mile of her home, she asked for a meet up and we happily stopped for a visit and lunch with her and her husband, Don. We talked dogs, RVs, traveling, etc. By the way, if anyone is breeding a litter of competition style Toy Poodles, let me know. Carolyn is ‘toying’ with the idea of adding in another small Poodle to her crew.

Don Wray made some excellent suggestions on what to do in this area of the coast. One stop was Fort Stevens State Park which had a ship wreck on their coastline called the Peter Iredale, an English sailing ship that ran aground during a storm in 1906. There isn’t much left, but it was still fun to see.

Fort Stevens was built during World War 11 to help protect the coastline from Japanese attacks. Interestingly, the fort was bombed by a Japanese sub during the war, but it was a secret post, so the commander of our troops decided against firing back. No one was injured and the Japanese captain later admitted he had no idea that was a military post and would never have considered shooting if he had. Weird story, but a group was doing a reenactment of that day when we visited on June 22^nd.

The Oregon Coast has some outstanding beaches. Sure, the water is cold, but honestly, I could spend hours walking the coastline and enjoying the densely forested high cliffs and grassing dunes of this beautiful state. My children had as much fun on these beaches spying sea life in tide pools and playing in the sand as they ever did on the scalding hot beaches of Texas. I didn’t burn to a crisp and had so much fun snapping photos of the wonderful friendly people walking or riding on the sands.