Cannon Beach

My sister, grandma and I planned this trip to the beach a long time ago. My hope was that it would be late enough that the beach crowd would be gone but early enough that we would have beautiful sunny weather. Sadly, neither happened.

Thankfully you don't need either of those things to have a wonderful time. And we did!

The boys and I drove out Friday morning (we had to leave Chris behind) and headed out to the coast. We made great time and met up with my mom, my grandma, my sisters, and my niece and nephew.

Although it wasn't sunny, there was no wind and we had lots of fun playing in the sand and the ocean.

Charlie liked the sand...

but he LOVED the ocean!

We all helped build this sandcastle for Princess Maggie

We stayed in this very charming lodge at the north end of town and had a wonderful two-bedroom apartment with a full kitchen and a gas fireplace. If you are ever in Cannon Beach, I highly recommend staying here. (The link is on our list on the side bar) Not only is the room really nice, but you also get to use the gym-activity center at the Cannon Beach Conference Center for free and their ice cream parlor, too. It is lots of fun and is especially nice if the weather is bad. (which happens quite on bit on the OR coast) Carpet ball is our favorite game!

our room

playing checkers in the game room

We all played mini-golf

Haystack Rock has some beautiful tide pools, so we decided to take advantage of a later morning low tide and go and explore. They were fun to walk around and see all of the different sea life that lives on the rocks. It was like being at the aquarium touch pools. Unfortunately we hadn't realized how far down the beach we had walked until it was time to go back to the hotel and get some breakfast. And it was a LONG walk back!

Over half-way to Haystack Rock

We spent the rest of the day strolling to the kite shop, going to my favorite quilt shop (Grandma stayed with the boys and played poker while Theresa and I went, thanks Grandma!), playing on the beach and enjoying two very nice meals out.

a large group of people were on the beach building sandcastles near where we were playing

We were sad to leave Grandma and Theresa behind on Saturday night. We would have loved to stay. But we missed Dad and needed to get back for our first day of Sunday School and Family Nite.