Andrea Middleton

Bathtime conversation

Bax, all companionable: “Amelia, we don’t like the rain, do we?”

A: “No, I love the rain.”

B: “Me too. I love the rain too.”

A: “But you just said you didn’t like rain.”

B: “I was just joking.”

Yep, that’s right — we’re headed to the Oregon Coast in August for 6 nights of camping! Two nights at Fort Stevens, 2 nights at Nehalem State Park, and 2 nights at Beverly Beach. We thought about hitting Champoeg on the way back to Portland, but with two little kids in tow, I’m fairly sure we’re going to run out of clean clothes on Wednesday. 😉 Pickings are a little slim, but all the good sites are NOT booked up 100% yet, shew!

Now we can plan more carefully what we want to do when we’re not on the beach — which will probably not be a lot of the time, unless the weather is just stinking. Currently I’m pretty excited about historical reenactors at Fort Clatsop. Looking forward to getting my Lewis and Clark on this summer! Maybe I’ll start researching lighthouses too, otherwise known as the “how far up the narrow stairs will Amelia start whining that her legs are tired” game.

We were going to do Tillicum instead of Beverly Beach near Newport, but realized just in time that it had no showers. For days 5 & 6 of camping on the coast, I think I require hot showers. We’ll see about the kids. 😉 We camped at a Beverly Beach when Baxter was quite little (just for one night), and we really liked how forested it was, so close to the beach. Our campsite this year is right next to the playground, yay!

In Newport we plan to see the aquarium at least, and we may or may not see the Sea Lion Caves. My dad says it’s not worth it, but we’ll see. Maybe we’ll go super touristy, maybe we’ll stay on the sand every moment possible. Speaking of, should I get Tom a wetsuit?

Planning a family road trip

We’re planning to take a week off in August to take our first major family road trip. The kids are 3 & 6 now, and probably close to old enough to tolerate 3-4 hours in the car per day without driving us insane. We had toyed with the idea of going down to Yellowstone when we thought Tom’s dad would be coming with us, but since he’s elected to sit this one out, we’re thinking of just toodling around the state of Oregon.

One of my favorite places to visit in Oregon, other than the coast, is Crater Lake. However, I’m not sure the kids are old enough to get anything out of it. Since we’ll be traveling in August, I’m not wild about going to Bend, since it’s so high desert and I’m not a huge fan of deserts in the first place, much less hot ones.

So now we’re thinking we might just spend 4-5 days camping at the coast and then stay one night near a lake or river somewhere in the Willamette Valley area, on our way home.

I will say that I’ve done a night or two of research on the “family road trips with small kids in Oregon” topic, and the blogosphere is not rich with great data. I may end up having to blog our adventures just because so few other people seem to be doing so, and as every parent of small kids knows when planning a trip, more data is better. I have a nifty new iPad to use for beta testing now, so there’s really no excuse left for me to do some travel blogging this summer. 🙂