Redwoods or Bust – 2nd Entry

Linda Spalla, I feel you travel pain! This blog is very late due to a major accident involving my beloved iPhone, which died right at the beginning of our. vacation. This was a big problem since I planned to use a lot of information on my phone to keep us going and organized. It has no comparison to Bernie’s kidney stone, and nothing like his needing to jump across a courtyard from the second story while tethered to an IV, but it did take several hours and more anguish and money than I wanted to spend in order to rectify things.

Here is the story. We left Atlanta, happy as clams, yesterday morning at 10:30. The flight was delightful–no pain and no problems, just a long cross-country trek. Well, I will admit that the seats were a little close and when the guy in front of me leaned his seat back and mine would not go back in reciprocal fashion, I had to sit somewhere else. His back was so close to my face that it affected my vertigo.

The airport was actually fun yesterday even with our long wait for the flight. Nick sat next to a window watching the planes come in and almost got attacked by a cute little cub as pictured above.

Arriving so early, I had planned to rest for the remainder of the day–not the case with my dear sweetie. “Oh,” she said, “we’re not far from Haystack Rock and Cannon Beach.” You may remember the old movie, The Goonies (an old family favorite), was filmed near there. Off we went for a two hour delightful drive through the mountains to reach the coast.

Now, Judy is all about the destination, not the journey. As we traveled through this beautiful primordial forests, I kept hinting that perhaps you, my dear blog readers, might like to see a picture of those delightful trees. I said it several times, but Judy had her eyes on the destination. She wanted to get there, “because I want Oregon fish for dinner.” I never found out how that differed from an Alabama, Tennessee, or North Carolina fish, but she did get Pacific cod at Cannon Beach.

Since I don’t have a picture, you will just have to close your eyes so I can describe it to you as best I can. The trees were not redwoods, but must have been a close relatives. Imagine trees as tall as mountains themselves growing all over beautiful rolling hillsides, so thick that we needed the lights on as we passed under their canopies. Where you could see through the trees, huge fallen trees and brown stumps caught your eye all across the underbrush–oh, and speaking of the underbrush, imagine all variety of ferns growing thickly under the trees and bleeding out onto the side of the road. Now add the colors of goldenrod, QueenAnn’s lace, and various other flowers of purple, red and yellow that we could not identify. It was overwhelmingly, mysteriously beautiful!

Cannon Beach was crowded, due both to summer tourists and an open air farmer’s market. We visited the tourist information office after finally finding a place to park and then made our way down to the beach–you probably know where I am going with the iPhone. Nick had always wanted to put his toe in the Pacific, so off he went through the tidal pools and headed for the surf. Like good grandparents, we followed as best we could over the powdery soft sand and through the tidal pools ourselves.

Now these tidal pools are deceptive. What looks like dark mud is actually hard, slippery rocks that torture your feet and test your balance ability – Judy excellent, not so with me. Water that looks only a few inches deep is actually–well, you know don’t you? It was deeper than I thought, and down I went. At first not too far, but believe it or not, I actually misjudged the depth of several of those tidal pools. When I finally had time to look at the damage, the bottom part of my shorts had gone in the water, somewhat. To be honest, there was just a little water on the phone, but it was enough to KILL THE PHONE. Why do they make something as usable as a smartphone and allow it to be attacked and completely destroyed by a drop or two of water? Do they not know that water occupies more than two-thirds the surface of the earth?

We stayed almost until sundown to get a few shots of the rocks from the overlook in Echola State Park, listed interestingly enough as a tsunami evacuation route.

So, here we are now at the ATT Store in Eugene, Oregon waiting while my new iPhone sucks the information about my account from the cloud. I will have to say that the staff is delightful and we are also having a lot of fun just talking with them while we wait. I suppose that’s what really makes a vacation a great vacation–the little, delightful surprises that come your way.