Beauty Doesn't Just Happen

Freckles:

After a delicious meal of dandylions and carrots, a gal's got to work on looking her best. It's a lot of effort, much twisting and turning involved. But, I do believe that the results are worth the effort.

Giant Leaves

Deb:

Guess I'll have to be the one to post this, because Freckles is a little busy chomping down these giant dandelions! Can you imagine the lawn that has weeds this big?

Begging and Bananas and Heat

Freckles:

Tonight I was really, really hungry because I've been left alone all day with nobody here to feed me and it's been over a hundred degrees here and I have a fur coat, you know, and Deb's had the flu (who gets the flu in August???!) and did I mention I was really, really hungry?

The begging worked.

I got banana!

The Oregon Coast

After we left the Oregon Caves, we drove up the Oregon Coast.

There are beautiful sandy beaches all along the coast, and we couldn't have asked for better weather. Gorgeous clear skies all the way. There are long stretches of blue ocean as far as you can see and sometimes huge rocks rising from the sea that look like a giant plopped them right down in the water.

I had to take a picture of the warning signs. Might be easier to have a sign showing what you CAN do at the beach!

The last two pictures were taken at Lincoln City. There are always kites flying there (could have something to do with the kite shop right across the highway from this public access!)

We stayed at a hotel right on the beach. Lovely!

Cave Housing

Deb:

While we were visiting the Oregon Caves, we stayed at The Chateau, a rustic hotel built in 1934. Along with it's log cabin ambiance and original Monterey furniture, it has no elevator, no air conditioning, no television, and no phones in the rooms. Built into the side of the slope, the building is six stories high. We, of course, stayed on the top floor. The top two pictures are the front and side. The next two pictures are the back of the building. If you look closely at the pictures you can see the tiny top floor with the dinky windows (guess it could be the attic.) We stayed in the two connected rooms on the far right side in the back (a suite!)

Quiet, peaceful, and surrounded by the beauty of natural elements, it is a lovely place to retreat, read a good book, take a walk, and talk to one another.

This last picture is the entrance to the cave. See that hole in the middle?

Where in the World was Deb?

Deb:

I posted about the first week I was gone from home to the PNW Children's Book Conference in Portland, so here's the scoop about the second week that I was gone.

My husband and I drove down to the very southern part of Oregon to the Oregon Caves National Monument. They were celebrating their 100th anniversary as a national monument (we didn't know that when we decided to go there.) They were actually discovered much earlier in 1874 by Elijah Davidson and his dog while chasing a bear during a hunting trip.

The Oregon Caves consist of a system of connected caves that people can tour. The tour has 576 steps, mostly going up and mostly uneven and wet.

It is beautiful inside the caves. I've included a couple of pictures, but they can't capture the magnificent shapes and colors of the nooks and crannies that greet you throughout.

One extra adventure we had: the website and the articles we read in preparation told us that the last 20 miles on the road to the caves is winding. What they don't tell you is that the road goes up, up, up and has a dinky shoulder with a steep drop off and no guardrail on most of the route.

But we survived the road and the tour of the caves (huff puff!) It's a wonderful place to visit, if you're ever in that part of the country.

(Sorry about the blocks of text in this post. Blogger is being stubborn today and won't let me put blank lines between my paragraphs or indent with blank spaces at the beginning of my paragraphs!)