Posts Tagged With: newport

Quick Visits to 4 States

My purpose for keeping this blog is so that we have a journal of all of the places that we have visited in our travels. Visiting the northeast means we’re passing through several states quickly, unlike when we travel out west and it takes so long just to get from one state to the next. I feel like I just don’t have enough to say about some of these places to justify an entire post, but I don’t want to forget about this part of our trip either. So this post is just a place to record what we did in 4 states where we did not spend much time.

Delaware

After a very busy week in Washington D.C. we spent a weekend relaxing at Lums Pond State Park in Delaware. We didn’t do anything else in DE except just rest and enjoy the state park. Our site backed up to Lums Pond which looked more like a lake to me. We had a fishing dock behind us and Jake & I took the kayak out on the lake pond.

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This was the perfect spot to rest after such a busy few days in DC.

New Jersey

We actually spent a week in New Jersey, but did not get out much during the week. Besides the fact that the weather wasn’t that great, we needed some downtime for work and school. I know it may look like we’re always on vacation, but in reality we have real-life stuff to do during the week. This was the week after we took time off work to visit D.C. so it was nice to just get back into a “normal” routine, whatever that means. 😉

Once the weekend rolled around we had a nice sunny day and decided to go check out one of the boardwalks along the Jersey Shore. We walked along the boardwalk in Ocean City, the kids got to ride one ride (because the rides are not cheap), they played for a bit in an arcade and then had some ice cream.

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This store reminds me of a certain Fat Cat, also known as Bad Kitty.

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After NJ, we spent some time in Pennsylvania and New York which I already blogged about previously.

Connecticut

After NY, we had a quick stop in Mystic, CT. Are you old enough to remember the Julia Roberts movie Mystic Pizza? I thought it was fun to eat at that pizza place even though the movie was not really filmed there.

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The town of Mystic is super cute!

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Rhode Island

I saved the best for last. After CT, we had another quick stop in Narragansett, RI where we stayed at a beautiful state park called Fishermen’s Memorial State Park. I loved Rhode Island, especially the Cliff Walk! We went to Newport to hike along the Cliff Walk that I had heard about from some other Fulltime Families. This was gorgeous and made me excited to eventually get to Maine where I think we’ll see lots more beautiful ocean views over rocky cliffs.

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This is called Forty Steps and is where we started our hike.

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Newport, RI is known for some really extravagant mansions. You can see some of them along this Cliff Walk. I was thankful to have such a beautiful day to see this.

That wraps up my recap of our quick visits to these 4 states. On to Massachusetts next.

Categories: Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, Rhode Island | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Cape Perpetua and Seal Rock

This post wraps up the remainder of the places we visited while in the Newport area. If you missed the post about the lighthouses you can see it here: Yaquina and Heceta Head Lighthouses.

Cape Perpetua is best visited during high tide, while Seal Rock is best visited during low tide. I’m thankful for Trip Advisor where I find all of these useful tips!

Cape Perpetua

This park has some amazing displays of the Pacific during high tide. Sometimes pictures just do not do it justice and a video is a better representation, so I uploaded a couple of videos that I hope will display properly here.

The first one is Thor’s Well. This is a deep hole that fills and empties continuously during high tide. It’s really cool!

The second one shows the powerful surf crashing against the rocks and getting the camera operator (me!) wet. By the way, that’s not me yelling in the background; it’s some random stranger. 😉

We started the day driving up to the scenic viewpoint since we couldn’t find any parking at the Thor’s Well area. It was worth it for this view!

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When we went back down to the parking lot we were able to find a spot, so we got out and explored the Thor’s Well area with all the incredible displays that happen twice a day at high tide.

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Thor’s Well

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The boys liked catching tadpoles in the tide pools.

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Then we took the scenic walk over to the other section of the park to see the Devil’s Churn.

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A little Peace and Love for the walk.

The Devil’s Churn is an area where the surf comes in and fills up this little inlet. By the time we got there the tide was not at the high point anymore so we didn’t see quite the display we saw at Thor’s Well, but still cool nonetheless.

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Devil’s Churn

We even saw whales from here! It’s very hard to get a good picture of one, but can you see the spray out there? The grey spot under it is a whale and the spray was where it just spouted.

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Seal Rock State Park

Seal Rock is best visited during low tide for the beautiful tide pools. Jake and I love searching all the tide pools for colorful sea creatures, while Chris and Jesse play ball on the beach.

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Seal Rock

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During our 3 weeks in Newport we had 9 straight days of cloudy, foggy and drizzly weather. It was also very cold for August! I can’t complain because other than those 9 days we had beautiful weather the rest of the time we spent in Oregon (a total of 10 weeks). But I can certainly understand how some people that live in dreary weather for extended periods of time can experience Seasonal Affective Disorder and depression. I was really glad when the sun finally came out when we moved on to our next stop at Cape Lookout which I will write about next time. Cheers to sunny skies!

Categories: Oregon | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Yaquina and Heceta Head Lighthouses

Oregon Coast lighthouses are incredible! Just before we came to Oregon I heard from the Road Trip Teacher about a lapbook/notebook study she has available about the Oregon Coast lighthouses. My kids did the entire study on all of the lighthouses in Oregon. We learned so much about the history of these lighthouses before even visiting them which made our visits that much more interesting.

This post covers 2 of the lighthouses we visited while in the Newport area.

Yaquina Head Lighthouse was our favorite and it is also the tallest lighthouse in Oregon. We were able to tour the inside which made it even better.

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The tours are free, but if you go on a weekend (or possibly even a weekday in the summer) it’s not likely you’ll get a spot. We reserved a tour ahead of time online and when we showed up on a Saturday they did not have any spots left for anyone that had not reserved online. It costs $1.50/person to reserve online and I thought that was reasonable since we were planning to visit on a Saturday in the summer and it was nice to know we had a spot.

Anyway, the lighthouse tour was great! The tour guide explained the history of the lighthouse and its keepers. She explained about the oil they used and how much they needed at various times of the year depending on how much daylight there was at that time of the year. We were able to walk up to the top of the lighthouse and see the light going on and off.

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It was incredible!

Outside of the lighthouse the views were gorgeous!

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Just outside the lighthouse was a fabulous place for tide pools during low tide!

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Yaquina Head is part of the National Park service so the kids were able to earn another Junior Ranger badge there.

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After the lighthouse we drove up the coast a little further to Otter Crest Loop in Depoe Bay. We saw whales in Depoe Bay, but unfortunately no pictures of them.

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Otter Crest

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Dungeness crab trying to survive in the tide pool until the tide comes back in.

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Otter Crest

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Depoe Bay, Oregon

At Otter Crest we checked out the devil’s punchbowl which is a large rock hole that water from the Pacific fills in at high tide and goes out at low tide. It was really cool! We were there at low tide when it was nearly empty, but went back again on a different day at high tide.

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Devil’s Punchbowl at low tide.

I was expecting to see it full at high tide, but it was not much higher than what we saw at low tide.

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Devil’s Punchbowl at high tide.

We went to visit Heceta Head lighthouse on a different weekend. Like all Oregon lighthouses it was quite beautiful also.

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These are some pictures of the surrounding ocean views from the lighthouse.

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Oh my goodness, I could never get enough of the beauty of the Oregon coast! We visited some other lighthouses along the way, so stay tuned.

 

Categories: Oregon | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Newport, Oregon and South Beach State Park

We spent 3 weeks in the Newport area where there is tons of stuff to do. I continue to be amazed by the beauty of the Oregon coast and the abundance of awesome things to see and do. This post will only cover the first week.

During our first week we stayed at South Beach State Park. I’ll admit this was not one of our favorite state parks because it was very crowded and noisy. Our site was on the corner of the main road into and out of the campground so there was constant activity right outside the door meaning we had zero privacy while sitting outside.

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The thing this park had going for it though was the location. The beach was only a short 1/4 mile walk down a trail from the campground, and there were very nice paved bike trails.

One evening I checked out the bike trail that goes all the way to the Port of Newport fishing pier just under the beautiful Yaquina Bay Bridge.

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Another evening I got my people to join me on this bike ride and we stopped at the Rogue Brewery for dinner and a tour of the brewery. The tour was really interesting and the kids got to try out some root beer while Chris & I got to try the real stuff.

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The tour guide was very enthusiastic about his job and made the tour very enjoyable. I thought it was cool how they make these barrels.

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Barrel making

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Finished product

Part of the tour included a ride on this little train to go to different buildings. This was especially fun for the kids.

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Riding our bikes back home into the sunset was such a treat!

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The Hatfield Marine Science Center is also near the brewery which we went to on a different day. This is a small science center that is part of Oregon State University and it’s free to get in.

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There was a beautiful display of sea creatures that you can sometimes find in the tide pools in the area. We learned about how you can touch the sea urchins and anemones and the spines will clamp around your finger. It doesn’t hurt, just feels funny.

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Fat Cat had an adventure while we were at South Beach. We decided to take her to the beach one night to watch the sunset. Yeah I know, cats are not fans of going to the beach but for some reason Chris thought it would be a good idea. He wore her around his neck on the way there because she’s not a fan of walking on a leash.

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At one point she was snuggled up under some towels and somehow a dog seemed to know just where she was hiding because the dog ran right up to her to start playing. She leaped into the air and hissed, then arched her back while her hair stood on end. It was quite a site to see!

We stuck around a little bit longer to see the sunset, but I can tell you Fat Cat was not happy and did not settle down to relax again.

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Fat Cat is on alert for any other dogs.

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To show you just how mad she was, I think we drove her to drink!

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She’s considering it.

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Oh no!

Now before anyone gets mad at me for letting my cat drink beer, I’ll let you know that she really didn’t drink any. She just sniffed it, so no worries!

And that was enough adventure for Fat Cat for a while. 🙂

Stay tuned for more fun things to do in the Newport area.

Categories: Oregon | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

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