What I Did on my Summer Vacation…

We spent a week at the beach trying to pack in a whole summer’s fun into one week, and pretty well managed it!  Some of the highlights:

A drive to Newport for lunch taking the Otter Crest scenic loop which goes by my favorite house with it’s own little bridge across the way.

These days we always try for the scenic route, no matter where we’re going, so we drove into Newport via agate beach and through this little park which gives great views of the jetty and the way the jetty works (allowing sand to pile up):

just past the jetty, the road goes under the beautiful Yaquina Bay Bridge (a WPA project) and down to the Bayfront:

We had lunch at Local Ocean Seafood (tuna skewers for me, fish tacos for R) where we got a view of the bridge from the other side

After lunch we went for a coffee at Panini in Nye Beach and that’s when we noticed it was really crowded in Nye Beach–even for the summer– and here’s why:

A couple of guys from Californnia spent a week fishing for tuna up along the coast.  One night they went to bed and when they woke up…oops…they were on the beach, giving a real boost to local tourism!

Several evenings we went out to our own bay after dinner with a glass of wine to watch the sunset:

It’s fun to sit down there and watch the people as well as soaking in the beautiful sunsets.  One evening the “Three Graces” arrived on scooters

lept onto the big snag and all began looking at their cell phones

AFter a bit of climbing around they lept off one by one and took off:

Next came the ladies with seven small dogs who moved so fast I couldn’t get their pictures except in a blur.  I include them here because they reminded me of paintings by the Italian futurist Balla:

Now lest you think we lolled around all week long, there WERE projects.  When Mike built the fence a couple of years ago he never got around to putting the lattice on top, though the frame work was there:

Last year we just ignored it but this year we went to the lumber yard and loaded the car.

Within an hour Roger had it up:

There were long beach walks on Nelscott beach

This couple arrived with thir grand son and a whole bag of popcorn which they began to throw to the gulls.  Several of the gulls actually faced into the wind and hoverd there like hummingbirds, cathing the popcorn mid air.  It was sort of like a circus act:

Of course our own beach is always lovely and I went down to get one of the last shots of the remains of the old dock:

of course we had coffees

and then   we made a survey of murals to be seen locally

he got into it: