THE ADVENTURES OF TEAM DANGER: Southern Oregon's 101 Beaches

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Southern Oregon's 101 Beaches

Highway 101 is known for its beautiful coastline.

So of course we had to stop and visit several beaches between the Redwoods and our destination for the evening, Gold Beach.

We passed so many beautiful beaches, we couldn't possibly see them all.

Maybe we got out at four at five or them?

I lost track.

I couldn't begin to find a favorite.

They were all so unique, so beautiful, so relaxing.

I especially loved how we pretty much always had the beaches to ourselves.

Where were the people?

I mean, these beaches were amazing. Why weren't people flocking here in droves?

I didn't get it at all.

Unless it was because the water was freeing?

You'll notice Carl and I were smart enough to have our jackets on.

The kids were cold, too, but they'll never admit it.

Our time on these beaches might have been my favorite time of the whole trip.

As I watched the kids run around and play without a care in the world, I sat down a piece of driftwood, and thought to myself ... This.

This is what family travel is all about.

Getting away and creating amazing, unique memories that only the four of you share.

Experiencing new places together, and finding the unexpected jobs in beautiful, empty beaches in Oregon.

For instance, we were fascinated by these creatures we saw, and not sure what they were. We talked about them a lot. It was only later, after we got home, that I found out they are called By the Wind Sailors, and it is some sort of unknown current mystery as to why billions of these creatures are suddenly appearing for the first time along the beaches of Washington, Oregon, and now California. And I doubt that anyone of us will ever forget the time we encountered thousands of By the Wind Sailors on the beaches of Oregon. Ryan was fascinated with other beach finds, as well.

Wonderful, wonderful times.

Its also interesting to see the different skies and weather we encountered.

We drove in and out of fog and sunshine, cold and heat.

Welcome to the Pacific Northwest. ;)

Where you can experience all four seasons, in one day.

I'm sure it has something to do with us being from Texas, but anytime we can get our feet into the ocean, it's an amazing feeling.

The boys were over the moon to spot a whale.

Can you see it?

Carl and I still aren't certain it wasn't just a few well-placed rocks, but as far as the boys are concerned, we saw a whale.

It looks like a tail, right?

We geocached about five or six times on this drive, but we only found two (or three?) of them. It became something of a joke, because the Oregon geocaches were hard and we had to give up on so many of them, or else we would have never made it to Gold Beach for the night.

You also might notice Ryan went through about three costume changes during this drive, since he completely ignored my pleas to not get wet after declining to put his bathing suit on. He finally got smart by this beach. ;)

Since we were staying at a town called GOLD Beach, I felt we needed to be at the beach for a beautiful sunset. We drove out to this beach and prepared to be awed.

Unfortunately,as you can see below, the land curved in a lot, so we soon realized the sun was going to set over that jetty.

We ran back to our car and drove like mad out on to that jetty, so that we could find a good sunset viewpoint.

The water is just beyond these grassy marshes, but it doesn't really show with the sun's glare.

Still, it was beautiful.

And I simply adore the way these photos turned out.

It was also FREEZING out on the jetty, with the wind whipping around us. The temperatures were in the low fifties earlier in the day, and now that the sun was setting, whoa... we Texans didn't know how to handle this kind of cold. ;)