While Nate was growing up, he spent quite a few summers in Oregon with his family. He took me there once, right after we got married and we've always wanted to go again and take the kids. So this year we decided to do it. We spent 5 days camping at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park near Winchester Bay and Reedsport.
I'm going to have to split up the trip into a few different posts simply because there is so much to tell and there are so many pictures to share. So here goes.....
If you know me but at all, you know that camping is not my favorite. I don't like being dirty. I don't like sleeping in a tent. I don't like the campfire smell that permeates your clothes and hair. And I definitely don't like outhouses. So when Nate said he wanted to go camping in Oregon, I told him I had a few conditions. We had to have a campground with showers and flushing toilets and the cooking had to be kept simple. He knew right where to go. I have to admit that I enjoyed this camping trip more than any other that I've done before. Being able to take a hot shower every day, not have the stink of an outhouse, getting to eat out occasionally, and Nate taking over the rest of the cooking definitely made it enjoyable. =) The nice, cool weather helped too. In my experience, camping has always been hot and sweaty during the day and a little bit miserable. In Oregon, the highs were in the upper 60's. It was pure bliss!
I'm still not sure what possessed us to schedule the trip like we did. We planned it back in March or April. Somehow it ended up that we would be leaving for Oregon the same day that Nate would be getting back from Scout Camp and we would be in Oregon during finals week of my summer semester. Not our best bit of planning, but we pulled it off.
So I spent the week before our trip being a crazy woman. I had lots of school assignments to do plus taking my finals early and getting ready for the trip. Nate was gone to Scout Camp from Thursday until Saturday. Thanks to a lot of help from family, (Nate's parents were in town and watched the kids while I did some of my finals and my mom took them Friday night and all day Saturday so I could finish up assignments and get the packing done) we managed to get everything done and were ready to leave late Saturday night.
We decided to take our car, a Chevy Impala, rather than our Jeep Commander. The Commander has more room and is much more comfortable for long drives, but the Impala gets 10 to 15 miles per gallon more than the Jeep and on a long drive that translates into a couple of hundred dollars worth of difference.
Much to my amazement, Nate managed to pack everything we would need into the trunk of our Chevy Impala. In order to save space, we didn't take up all of our food for the trip. We just packed what we would need for the first day or two and then planned to get groceries in Oregon.
It's a 15 hour drive to where we were staying. Nate prefers to do long drives through the night so that the kids can sleep and there's a lot less traffic. The drive was pretty uneventful. The kids slept pretty well most of the way. We arrived at our campsite at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park in the mid-afternoon on Sunday.
The campground was nice and peaceful. There was a lake, Lake Marie, near the campground and it's just a short drive down to the lighthouse and the ocean. The first thing we did after getting the tent set up was to take a nice long nap. That night we roasted hot dogs and s'mores for dinner. We walked down to check out the lake. There's a 1 mile trail that goes around the lake and there is a small sandy beach area for playing or swimming. The rest of the evening we just relaxed in camp. Then we slept to the sound of the ocean waves crashing on the rocks and the foghorn of the lighthouse in the distance.
On Monday the first order of business was to get a few groceries. So we went to the Safeway in Reedsport. That store is tiny! You can barely get your cart through the aisles. The clerk informed us that we had great timing. We had just missed the annual Dune Fest that had been that weekend. Apparently the town is pretty much overrun by people and their dune buggies and the store had lots of problems with overcrowding and stealing. She said she was so glad to see them all go.
After a healthy breakfast at McDonald's, (yes, that's how I cook when I camp) we headed back to camp. Then we decided to go check out the pier where people were doing some crabbing. First we had to walk on the beach. This was the first time any of our kids had been to the ocean and they were so excited to walk in the sand in their bare feet and look for seashells.
After getting sufficiently wet and sandy, we walked down the pier to watch the crabbing. Two gentlemen were kind enough to explain everything to the kids and let them watch as they pulled in their crabs and sorted out the ones that had to be thrown back.
We spent the rest of Monday at our campsite. The kids loved playing in the dirt and Jonah even found a little "camouflage" spot in the bushes where he and Lilly liked to set up their chairs and hang out. I took this picture right after Jonah said, "Mom! I bet you can't see me. I blend right in!"
That night, after everyone was in their pajamas and it had gotten dark, we decided to drive over to the lighthouse so that the kids could see it lit up. The kids loved seeing how the lights danced on the trees and out into the ocean.
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| Daddy & Jayne at the lighthouse. |
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