We've done a lot in the last few days and I'm sitting here in a motel room just off California 1 (the Pacific Coast Highway) near Mendocino trying to post everything I meant to post on this blog, all at once. Last time I left you in the real time version of this blog we were sitting in a Starbucks trying to figure out what to do after leaving Portland. After checking the weather forecast and making a couple calls we realized the worst of the bad storm that had hit the Oregon coast was over and we could head down that way after all.

This was great news because we'd really been looking forward to the Oregon coast, even though the Oregon coast, kind of like northern Idaho, was a place I knew absolutely nothing about until reading guide books and talking to people.

Over the course of a couple days, starting in Astoria, we drove down the entire thing on 101, stopping for the night in Cannon Beach the first night and Yachats the second (the movie "Goonies" was filmed in both Astoria - where it took place - and Cannon Beach, and you might recognize the huge rock featured in the pictures below).

I was in love with these towns the minute I saw them, especially Astoria with its Victorian houses set high on a hillside and have already begun planning our retirement there even though J says he "wants to stay on the east coast."

We took our time, stopping as often as we wanted to check out the amazing views. Oregon is known for it's rocky shoreline - huge rocks jut up out of the ocean at random intervals. Most famous is Haystack Rock in Cannon Beach.

When I walked over to the beach and saw that site in the morning (we'd gotten in after dark the night before), I'm telling you, it took my breath away. The sky was so blue, the air so clear and I just felt so good in the presence of it all.

The feeling pretty much overrode the other feeling I was having, which was a slight headache because, you see, the other notable thing we did on the Oregon Coast was go into a local brewpub the night before with the idea of having one local beer, but instead we met these two girls who lived in Cannon Beach (both our age) at the bar and we ended up having, you know, sort of more than one local beer.

This experience lacks scenic photographs but did include a lot of from-the-heart (and very loud) talks about true love, travel and what life in their little town is like ("Everybody knows EVERYTHING about EVERYONE here!").