Avenue of the Giants

Well, we needed more time for this!!!  We had about an 8 hour driving day on the day of the last leg of our trip home, and Brian really wanted to detour through Avenue of the Giants. I wasn't so excited to add time to our trip.  However, the small bit we were able to see was worth it.  We will for sure be doing a trip back up to spent more time.  The kids, especially Myles, could have spent hours exploring the woods. I don't have time to edit, but these are beautiful on their own.

 

 

 And of course.....we love all the little road side shops!!

Cannon Beach and Seaside, OR

 Elk prints at Ecola State Park.

 Dinner with a view at Mo's.

 I made Brian pull over on the way back to Lincoln City to get a picture of the clouds rolling in over the mountains. It was so pretty!

 

 That was breakfast on the go from the store at Neskowin.

This was another fun day with the family, visiting towns I used to visit as a kid. Some things were the same, some had changed, but we all had fun!

Neskowin, Ghost Beach, and Proposal Rock - OR

Here's info on Neskowin.
Here's the info for Ghost Beach.

 Ok, so we knew about the trees and beach thing, and were hopeful that they would be visible when we went.  They were!! It's very odd to see these tree stumps all over the beach, and to know that it's actually the tips of giant trees that we are seeing, not stumps, like bottom of the tree stumps.  To also know they were only exposed in 1996-1997 during a stormy winter season...pretty cool.  Before that, nobody knew there was a sunken forest under this beach.

Be warned though, you have to cross a pretty fast moving creek/river to have access to the part of the beach where the trees are.  We debated for a while, and then just went for it and hoped it wasn't too deep where the water got darker.

 The tops of the trees were full of shells, like self contained tide pools.

 It was a very rocky beach. Every time waves came in you could hear the rocks rolling into each other. It made a neat sound, but you don't want to wade in the water, the rocks hit you as the water comes in.

 There was this adorable store/deli/bakery with home made pies, cinnamon rolls, sausages, sandwiches, breakfast burritos....it was really cute, and really great food!

 There was a little path to the right of this stream that led to the beach, but you couldn't really see it from the parking area.  It took us a minute to figure out how to even get to the beach.

We stopped here another morning when we were heading up to Cannon Beach and Seaside and grabbed breakfast.  This little town was one of our favorites of the trip!!