GREEN HORNET ATTACK!! 9/4-13/2012

Well, on Tuesday, September 4, we headed north to Corvallis, OR, but on the way north, we completely enjoyed the Oregon Coast we have grown to love.  It seems as though it is always beautiful on the Oregon Coast!

 

Sunsets are so gorgeous when you are on the coast!  Anyway, we headed inland at Florence and then headed north in Eugene, OR, stopping for the night in a K-Mart parking lot in Corvalis, OR.  On Wednesday, we did some shopping/errands and then headed up to Chehalis, WA.

Just south of Chehalis, WA and north of Toledo, WA we pulled off the freeway about 10 miles and checked into the Chehalis Thousand Trails Preserve, parking in a beautiful spacious site for a few days of laundry, reading, campfires and relaxing as we waited for Jed, Kate and Green Hornet.

 

They stopped by Friday, on their way south to visit our #4 son, Sean, and his family down near Portland.  We fed them a late lunch and they rested up a little before finishing the drive south.  It is hard to travel with little ones, so we were more than glad to provide a resting place for them....especially if they let us play with Green Hornet a little!!  Here's Kate and Green Hornet resting inside our trailer.

Isn't he a handsome little bugger?!!!!

A few days later, on Sunday, they came back and we settled them into a little cabin on the preserve and we parked next door to them.  It was the beginning of a few days of chillin' with grand child #12!  We love it when our kids take the time out of their busy lives to spend time with us. Is Good!!

Besides playing with Green Hornet, we did what the Cowleys do best when they get together, cook and eat!  Here's Jed putting together his tin foil dinner to put on the campfire.

The fire was burning down into a good bed of coals.

Here's Ann starting her tin foil meal.

And here's Wayne putting all 5 of our creations on the coals.  Makes your mouth water, doesn't it!!!

A watched pot never boils, but 9 minutes on each side only allows a little sitting by the campfire time before it is time to eat!!

While we waited we all took turns holding Green Hornet and watching his reactions to all the stimulus from his first campout in the woods.

He seemed to enjoy all the attention and the outdoorsy smells and sights!

A smiling baby always makes everyone else smile!

My turn!  No My Turn!!

Then, after dinner an evening was spent teaching Green Hornet his consonant sounds.  It is amazing how he is starting to mimic sounds and it seems like he is starting to try to communicate.  He is fun to watch!

What is almost as much fun, is watching Jed's reactions as Green Hornet trains his Daddy on how to entertain him!!

Then the next morning we are right back at it again.....waiting for our own turn with the little guy!  Must be nice to be so popular!!

One day Jed wanted to go pick black berries, er.... Kate told him she really would like a black berry pie, er.....Ann offered to make a pie, well anyway, we went black berry picking.

  The berries were thick and it took us little time to pick a gallon of them!  We kept a lookout for bears, but we only had one spectator.....

,,,a small fawn that kept an eye on us awhile as it tried to figure out what we were doing.

Then, when we brought the berries back, while Ann made the pie, Jed told his son stories about what a great pie maker his grandmother is!

Walllaaaa!!  Ready for the oven!!!

And, Ohhhhh, it was soooo good!  While the pie baked, Jed's barbequing skills came in to play.  He bbq'ed chicken and baked potatoes on the grill outside the cabin.

Green Hornet was busy watching his Daddy while his Mommy looked on lovingly.

The chef and his son!

Then in the soft lights of the cabin we ate from Jed's skills and then after dinner, we ate fresh black berry pie ala mode'.

Anyway, by Wednesday, September 12, we were all 10 pounds heavier and sorrowfully had to say good bye to Jed, Kate and Green Hornet.  They left in the morning, we moved our trailer back up on the hill to near where we were before they arrived, set up and spent the day relaxing, paying bills, doing laundry and reading.  Tomorrow or the next day, we will head back to the Oregon Coast to head south towards Medford.  Good Family, Good Times, Good Food!  Life is good!!!

LABOR DAY / LOEB 8/29-9/4/2012

Oh what a wonderful, memory filled weekend we have just spent!  From about 1991 - 2006 we and two other couples and our families have spent labor Day Weekend together at Loeb State Park near Brookings, Oregon.  Each year we invited more families to join us tot he point that sometimes there were 70-80 parents and children with us.
But, since 2006 with us being retired, serving a mission and traveling we have not been back until now.  So, we three couples got together without kids and spent some "campfire time" traveling down memory lane and catching up on where our lives have been since the last "Loeb".  It was grand!
We arrived at Loeb and set up in Space 50 on Wednesday, August 29th.  Then Mark and Dawn arrived in the afternoon of Thursday.  We set them up with their tent in our site.

 Then, no sooner had we got them set up and our son from New York called and asked if we would be able to meet up with them up in Chehallis, WA in a week or so.  We did some figuring on the calendar and changed next weeks plans.

  Our weekend was spent visiting a lot.  Lots to discuss of memories, catch up and plans for the future.

Every morning and then each evening we would sit around the camp fire, just plain ol' visiting some more.  Here Mark gets some of the evening wood ready.

 Then we also fixed lots of meals together and ate and ate.

 Then we would eat some more.  Sometimes we ate outside at the picnic table and sometimes inside the trailer.

 And sometimes after a strol in Brookings or on the beach we ate out at sea food places.

 Then we would eat some more.  It felt like we did a lot of eating!

 But we did go on hikes, explored, visited with fellow campers, cruised town and the beach and walked down by the Chetco River.

 The scenery here was beautiful and the atmosphere and weather perfect.  So was the company!

 On Saturday our good friends Kirk and Kathy showed up and we met them in town for lunch.

  Then we walked on Harris Beach and went back to our camp for an evening of making tin foil dinners and an evening of campfire visits.  Good times, good memories with people we love.  20 plus years of friendships and raising families together. 

 Kirk and Kathy had to leave Saturday evening and then Mark and Dawn on Monday.  Monday, as Mark and Dawn left, I got to live out a dream I have had for 10-15 years.  Ann and I got to wave goodbye to all the Loebite friends as they drove back to work at the end of a wonderful weekend together.....and we stayed behind at Loeb for one more night....free to stay longer...unencumbered by needing to go to work on Tuesday.  Finally, today, I got to fulfill that dream!!

 Then, left alone at Loeb with other fellow retirees, we relaxed.  Ann went for a walk in the Chetco River.....

 ...and Wayne found a nice comfy spot in the sun.

 The rest of Monday was spent catching up on dishes, emails, this blog and planning how, where and when for our trip up to Chehallis, WA to meet up with our son, Jed and his family.  WE GET TO SPEND SOME TIME WITH GREEN HORNET AGAIN!!!  YEE HAW!!

DOWN THE OREGON COAST 8/25-29, 2012

We love the Oregon Coast and have gotten to the point that we now have favorite spots we like to stop and visit, site see, eat and spend the night.  We had hopes of spending a couple weeks coming down the coast, but we had to settle for a few days to accommodate our next gathering with other people.
One of our new stops we now add to our visits in our niece, Anna and her little one that now live in Newport.  We spent several hours visiting, touring her cute little bungalow, eating out at a quaint little restaurant that harkened back to our 1960's hippie days and a walk on the beach.  Time spent with family is always a good investment!

We love to stop at many waysides to admire the scenery and go for walks on the beach.  It is especially nice when the weather cooperates!

One of our favorite places to stop for excellent clam chowder and sour dough bread is a little hole in the wall place in Yachats.  It is called Luna Sea Fish House.  It is tiny, always busy and very friendly.  Their chowder is slightly spicy, thick, full of flavorful, large, tender clams and comes with a side of toasted sour dough bread.  Each time we have stopped there we have met other travelers that have heard of its great food.  This time we visited with two young men from England that were biking the coast from Vancouver, BC to San Francisco, CA.

We spent the night in a church parking lot in Florence, OR where we went to church the next morning.  We lazed around after church and ended up spending Sunday night there too.  Nice sabbath!  Monday morning we visited another of our favorite haunts, Old Town Florence.  We walked the streets and the docks,

 leisurely watching the fishermen go out and just being together.  Nice time!

Many stops later we drove across the beautiful bridge entering into North Bend/Coos Bay.  This magnificent structure is one of the several bridges along the west coast that just awes us each time we see it.

Then crossing it we always look to see if the train bridge is open or closed.  We have never, in all the many years we have traveled the coast, seen it closed!

Bandon, Oregon is another small coastal town we love to explore the "Old Town" portion down by the docks.  There is a mercantile store there that each time we have visited, Wayne has bought a couple of his hats he usually wears.  But, to his horror, this time, found that they no longer carry the style he likes.  He is down to only two hats now.  We will have to find another source.
We love the shops and the little dockside restaurants. Our favorite little place is affectionately called by the locals, "The Little Blue Building" but it is really called The Bandon Fish Market.

  Ann had Clam chowder in a bread bowl and I had a shrimp sandwich with a bowl of clam chowder.  I was full after the sandwich so we took the bread bowl and my chowder back to the trailer to have later for dinner.  We had a little girl from Germany take this picture.  She spoke very limited English and had to ask her parents permission to talk to us and take our picture.  Good safe parents!!  Oh, and the food is still yummy and the place was crowded, as usual!

 

We drove the rest of the day, headed south to one of our favorite free places to park on the Oregon Coast.  Along the way we found ample construction going on and her at one of our stops, saw a sea gull that was friends with the flag person.  It hung around her  I am sure, because she fed it.  Funny!

We arrived in the late afternoon at Myers Beach pull off in Pistol River State Park.  It was foggy, but still beautiful.  This spot is a very broad, paved wayside with very easy access to the beach.  Usually there are 4 or 5 rigs parked along the guard rail, but we were the only one while we were there.  Nice to have it all to ourselves, except for the numerous cars that stopped, took a  few pictures and drove on.

By sunset, the fog was gone out to sea and we were provided, free of charge mind you, a glorious Oregon Coast Sunset!

We spent the afternoon going for walks and reading and the evening playing "Sorry" which Ann won, 2 out of 3 games, reading, and watching a little Star Trek on the lap top.  We are about half way done with the first season.

All day Tuesday, we spent reading, exploring the beach, reading some more and just plain ol' enjoying the coast.  Ann gathered a menagerie of treasures, as usual.  She named her little dead shrimp, "Shrimpy" and gave it a place of honor in her gathering and then...

...on our walk, gave him a fitting resting place along the low tide rocks and sea life.  I think we are getting to the point where Ann needs a pet!

We love this beach, especially at low tide when we can walk behind a few of the huge rocks.

It makes us feel like we are on the long dreamed for deserted isle, away from all of humanity.

And then around in front of the large rock, we can see reality and our little "Haven From Slavin'" that we have called "home" for the last several years.  See the house up on the hill above Ann's head?  We would love to live there!!

So, see the little blue lawn chair out on the point to the left of the trailer?  That is where Wayne spent most of his day time, reading.  A perfect setting for peaceful reading!  Out there, he finished the book, "40 Ways To Look at Brigham Young" by Chad M. Orton and began "Joseph Smith - Rough Stone Rolling" by Richard Lyman Bushman.  Ann did most of her reading inside, reading "History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, Lucy Mack Smith" as compiled by Richard Lloyd Dewey.  This is a wonderful version for research students, like Ann, because it is an unabridged original version, containing the original unedited manuscript, the entirity of the original 1853 printing and the notes containing the small amounts altered during various publications.

On our walks, we gathered what sand dollar pieces we found for this picture dedicated to the Sand Dollar Queen, Linda.

About 5:00 PM on Tuesday, Aug. 28th, we left this wonderful place, and headed into Brookings to go grocery shopping.  We spent the night in the church parking lot and the next morning departed for Loeb State Park at 8:10 AM.  We put into a space and spent the morning reading and waiting for another space that we wanted to open up.  By 2:00 PM, we were moved into space 50 and by 4:00 PM we were all set up and ready for dinner.  Nice day and nice evening.  Tomorrow, we expect our friends, Mark and Dawn and Kirk and Kathy to arrive and we will spend labor Day Weekend together.