Cape Falcon

A couple of weeks ago one of those rare winter things happened-it was sunny. . .on a Saturday. I felt the need to take advantage of this, so I talked Ethan into accompanying me on what I called "a coastal adventure." He knew there would be Tillamook ice cream and clam chowder in it for him at some point so he was game.
We have been to so many beautiful places along the Oregon coast that it's hard not to return to our favorites, but I wanted to do some exploring. We went to Oswald West State park and hiked the Cape Falcon trail. Now, I've learned by experience that whenever you hike to Cape "Anything" you're going to start at sea level and end up at a beautiful lookout point. The catch is that between the sea and the beautiful lookout is a steep hill. We were up for it though.
As we started on the trail walking through the beautiful coastal forest, I couldn't believe that I was hiking in February without a jacket on! No snow, just ferns, moss and pine. The first half of the hike was easy, I kept thinking, "I can do this." I showed Ethan common foliage used in floral design that was growing all around us and quizzed him on it on the way back. After a while we started encountering mud pits every once in a while. Our feet got covered in mud despite our best efforts. Then trail started getting increasingly steep. I asked Ethan if he wanted to go back to the car. His reply was, "I've wanted to turn around ever since we started." I kept telling him it would all be worth it and how good that clam chowder would taste along with the sweet taste of victory.
We started seeing beautiful views of the ocean through the trees.
The last bit was making our way in between 2 walls of greenery
Then the spectacular view.
We made it!
We could have sat in the sun all day!
Ethan loved throwing rocks off the cliff. He even said, "Mom, in the far future can we come back here?" I was done hiking at that point, but he had to go back. One of the highlights on the way back was Ethan thinking he found a geocache, but it was really a bag of dog poop. We had a good laugh about that one. By the time we got back to our car we were starving. When Ethan finally got his clam chowder he drank it. It was such a fun day. It reminded me what a beautiful area we live in!

Seattle (Fun) Times

A few of weeks ago we realized that we had a couple of free nights at a hotel that were expiring, so we jaunted up to Seattle for a two days. Luckily we picked 2 sunny and dry days to visit. Our first stop was Ivar's for some seafood and clam chowder. Teasing the seagull is always fun, too. We went to a couple of our favorite shops along the waterfront then headed to the Seattle gum wall.
Caleb is taking gum out of his mouth to add to the wall, NOT taking gum off the wall to chew. :)
We all added our contribution.
Then a walk through Pike Place Market.
After dinner, we found a cool Japanese dollar store and loaded up on stuff we didn't need. We'll buy anything if it only costs a dollar.

We spent most of our second day at EMP (Experience Music Project), a museum near the Space Needle.
They had interesting exhibits on Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, horror movies and the movie Avatar.

Edward's scissorhands

The boys trying to play musical instruments together

I got to live out a life-long dream of scratching out some beats as a DJ for a few minutes, but I'm not going to post a picture of that. :)

Our next stop was Archie McPhee, a weird novelty store. Of course it was right up everyone's alley. We bought a huge mystery grab bag of merchandise and split it in the car. We got everything from an Alexander the Great action figure to tape with sausage links printed on it.
Our last stop was the Fremont Troll. Now we can say we've seen it.
And this is how we vacation, Farnworth style.