4th Anniversary!

Beginning the journey...

Travel buddy!

This year for our anniversary, for the first time, we decided to stay local and stay in the country :)  We were planning to spend labor day weekend at my parent's new house in Eugene, so we just made one big road trip out of it and spent our anniversary traveling down the 101 down the Washington and Oregon coast.  It was a beautiful decision!

Our first stop was in the Washington town of Westport.  There wasn't much to the town, but the scenery was beautiful!  We found our first state park and away we went!  We also saw Washington's tallest lighthouse (not saying much, apparently), (I) discovered you can drive on Washington's beaches (we were not so brave as to try it), and inadvertantly ended up walking over 6 miles between lunch and dinner :/  Gromit had a good time, although I think even he was ready to settle into the hotel after that walk.  We settled into our room with snacks and Good Morning Vietnam (first time for me, highly recommend).  Good first day. 

  
Day 2 we crossed over into Oregon and made our next stop in the beautiful town of Astoria.  While there, we had to check out the famous sealions, who were quite loud.  There was a little coffee shop right out along the wharf where we could see the sealions, so we hung out there for a while and enjoyed the view :) We also had some deliciously ethnic food  (Indian and Greek), and went and checked out the Astoria colomn, which was pretty impressive.  We had some nice hiking up to the colomn and strolling along the river before moving on down the 101. 

 

 

Our next stop was at Ecola State Park for some more hiking, which was beautiful and unusual, and somewhat challenging.  So, on to lunch :) We made a brief stop at Cannon Beach for some window browsing and crepes on the beach.  Haystack Rock was cool, but I'm not exactly sure what the hype was all about.  After Cannon Beach we continued on to Tillamook, and since it's right along the highway, we HAD to stop for ice cream :)

 

Our last overnight stop was in Lincoln City.  The town itself wasn't anything to write home about, but our best hotel was there, with a hottub in the room, a window overlooking the ocean, and our backyard was the beach.  Gromit had a ball playing ball :) We played some games of our own, including Star Wars (the light side finally won!).  After some more beach time and a nice brunch the next morning, we began our last day.  We made stop to check out Newport (meh) before meeting up with my parents in Florence (way better) and spending Labor Day Weekend in Eugene with them.  And a good time was had by all!