two vacations in one year?

We went to a family reunion on the Washington Coast. we stayed at the Cape Disappointment state park. They have yurts. (http://www.yurts.com/) yurts are cool. unfortunately, since my parents were paying and there weren't enough beds, my family had to stay in a tent. Tents are 80% of why I hate camping. Sleeping bags are the other 20%. anyway, it was a beautiful area. we were right next to the ocean. the crash of the waves lulled me to sleep every night. The wind was too cold to spend much time in the water, though. Amazingly enough, the Washington coast reminded me of Hawaii more than California did. California didn't smell right. It didn't feel right. The beach we were on somehow reminded me of Bikini Beach in November. it was nice. I could close my eyes and be there again.

(sorry about the funky coding. I have no idea why this is underlined or how to get rid of it. yes I did the whole control u thing. )

Here's some highlights:

this is the North Point lighthouse. we got to go up to the top. the view was amazing. The wind was something else though. this lighthouse and the cape disapointment lighthouse are both still working lighthouses.









here's the lighthouse at sunset. the picture is a bit dark, but I didn't have my tripod. I guess there was a guy from a magazine out taking pics that same night, so we picked a good night to watch sunset at the beach. I have better sunset pics. I'll post some in a seperate entry.



crossing the Astoria bridge. it's three miles long and the big arch thing you see in all the pictures is only 1/4 of it. the rest is flat and much closer to the river.








Star fish. we saw quite a few in the tide pools at the bottom of the cliffs. This particular one was having a good time trying to eat a crab. I'm sure it succeeded. the crab was already dead. The black shells are hundreds of muscles (that's what I was told anyway.) we did see living crabs. Steve kept catching one and releasing it in the tide pool so we could watch it bury itself.

all in all it was a good trip.