Florida Sandcastles

Our family spends a lot of time on the beach when we go to Indian Rocks, Florida. We keep busy building creations in the sand. Everything from plain piles of sand to snapping turtles to standard castles.

Some of us are the designers and the diggers, some the sculptors and others the supervisors, critics and admirers.

These are our creations for Florida 2008.

We imagined.
Then we enjoyed building and playing with the sand.

We also made sure to run around laughing as the sea reclaimed the sand we had borrowed.

Sunset Bay

On the labor day long weekend we ended the summer camping with the Mavros at Sunset Bay state park. In every dimension it was a great trip!

Friday Aug 29
The trip started by leaving Tigard around 3 pm. We had great traffic, Fresco style dinner at Taco Bell, with arrival at the campground around 8 pm. We set up in the fading light and settled in for good conversation and stories around the campfire.
We had sites A34 and A35 These are both nice with lots of space and close enough to the bathrooms and showers without having neighbors looking right into your windows.

Saturday Aug 30
Trisha started the day out right with a run on the Oregon Coast trail heading south from the campground to the Shore Acres garden...with a few unplanned detours due to lack of great signage on the trail ;-)

Then it was time to head to the beach. Initially it was just plain cold and windy like most Oregon beach days. Then we did some scouting. Down at the north end of Sunset Bay we found a little piece of beach heaven. Sheltered from the wind and the waves, this stretch of sand was calm, quiet and HOT. We staked our claim and kept coming back each subsequent day.

The evening was filled with the roar of engines and failing u-joints: the Coos Bay Speedway mud drag races.
It got cold but the cool trucks kept the adrenaline pumpin' No one can claim we don't try to be well rounded after attending this event. "Back woods culture" that we all enjoyed :-)
Check out the movies at this link for a taste of the action.

Sunday Aug 31
Our family made breakfast for the group with pancakes, bacon, and eggs. During breakfast we got caught with a sudden rain squall. It quickly passed and the sun began to peak out.

The Mavros headed to check out Bandon Dunes golf course. Apparently this is were golfers go when they die :-)

We headed out for a 2 mile hike to the Shore Acres Gardens. These gardens are part of the amazing history of this area all centered on the Simpson family. They are now a park with free access and definitely worth a visit with nice a pond, rose and dahlia gardens. We only got off the main trail once...but noticed when the greenery started closing in :-)

The weather just kept improving into the afternoon so we headed back to the beach.
Sand sculpture time! We worked on a whale and volcano and just plain digging in the sand. Nice!

I went out for a 7 mile leg stretcher starting at 6:30 pm from the campground to Simpson Reef. This section of the Oregon Coast trail was great for running, mostly flat with little hills for the down and ups of the inlets. This is my first run where I have seen marine mammals on en route: 8 harbor seals pulled upon the rocks for the low tide. Beautiful run that I did not want to end but I had promised to be back for supper...and I was hungry!
Then an evening of great food and campfire stories with the families.
At the end of the evening on our way back from showers Trisha and I heard a splash in the stream. With the flashlight we were able to pick out a large and small beaver making their way down the creek. Very cool.

Monday Sept 1
We set the alarms and headed out early to make the morning low tide. We met at Cape Arago state park to have a park ranger guide us through the tidal zones down near the cape headland. We spent about 2 hours exploring the different zones finding starfish, anemones, gumboot chitons and sea urchins. On the way back we took a close look at a sea lion that had washed up on the shore. Let's just say that the only movement was zealous twitching of the maggots doing their cleanup duty. The kids were enthralled :-)

A short half mile drive and we jumped out of the car at Simpson Reef to find a local sea awareness society setup with field scopes to view the sea lions and harbor seals. We took about 45 minutes watching the animals that are mostly transients headed between California and Alaska.

Back at the campsite to head out for more beach time. The kids worked on volcanoes and rounding up all the sand shrimp on the beach. Leah, Hallie and I spent some time working on the sand sculpture for the day: an octopus.

After dinner and seeing the Mavros on their way, we hung out and told stories. Then the kids started to terrorize the termites that were taking flight from the rotten log at the back of the camp.
Later after s'mores and banana boats, we headed to brush our teeth and once again had the good fortune of seeing the resident beavers. This time they let us watch with the flashlight as they snacked away on the blackberry leaves.

Tuesday, Sept 2
After both Trisha and I completed our morning runs on the trail, we finished packing up the campsite by a less than early 2 pm :-) Nothing left to do but head for a final trip to the beach!
Sadness ensued when we loaded into the car at 4 pm to head back to Portland.

An awesome trip that we are sure to repeat!

Nehalem Bay 2007

This past weekend was the annual family camping event for our church.
It took place out at Nehalem Bay near Manzanita, Oregon.

We had a great time hanging out with the Rouses, Manglesdorfs and the rest of the church families for Thursday night through Sunday morning.

We were in campsite F34 which was a good location right beside a camp host on a quiet corner not too far away from the beach, restrooms nor the kid's playground.

Most of the time was spent hanging out with friends, eating their food :-) and hitting the beach.

Another sand creation was born with the emergence of the giant lobster or crayfish (depending on who you ask).

I did limited running as I have started tapering for Waldo but we did a cool family run to Manzanita on the back road. Trisha discovered that there was a Manzanita Beach 5k walk, 5k & 10k run Saturday morning but we were too late to sign up. We will have to check it out for next year.

We then hit the local ice cream shop for some cones and sundaes.
The return trip was via the beach since it was low tide. With the all the beauty and the tailwind it is worth the little rust on the bikes :-)

Friday and Saturday were sunny but relatively cool with the breeze off the ocean. Sunday brought in some rain but it mostly held off while we packed up and headed for home.

Arcadia Beach

After a lazy morning at home where I finally submitted my proposal to OS Summit Asia and Trisha finished a 10 mile run, we headed out to Arcadia beach to spend a full afternoon at the beach with Kai and Renata.

It was pretty much the warmest, most wind free day I think we have ever had on the Oregon coast. Lots of people appeared to be in Cannon Beach and at Tolovana Beach so we were glad we knew about our little hide-way beach.

This beach is great as there is lots of sand, it is sheltered from the wind and it has rocks that are close enough to explore as the tide recedes. Sea anemones, goose neck barnacles, mussels and little crabs all added excitement and discovery to the day. As well it is rarely busy and just a short little ways from Cannon Beach.




"Sandcastle" #2 for the year was an attempt at an octopus. It had eight legs but I needed to have done the features facing away from the water in the shade so that they would show up in the picture :-)

We hit Mo's restaurant for dinner around 7:30 and even sat outside as there still was no wind. Our family highly recommends sharing the family size clam chowder. Great ending to a perfect day!

After less than enough sleep it was up early for me to try out a long run on the healing ankle. I was picked up by Scott near 5:30am to meet up with Rick and Susan. We started out slow and casual as everyone is at the tail end of training for the PCT 5o / 5o. I am doing the 50km while all the other studs are doing the 50 miler!
The plan was to do all of Leif Erikson trail. Turns out this was too much too soon for my sore foot. I knew it was going to be a long day around mile 10 when my ankle started to ache more than the average lately. So I decided to turn around early and start heading back at about 10.5 miles. This was the start of some walking for the day but as my friend Dave Stevenson says...there is nothing wrong with walking sometimes :-). Rick and Scott caught up to me around mile 8 (Susan had headed out for another 6 hours of running!!). Not moving fast but moving I made it in with some running and walking to finish 20.5 miles in 3:26 minutes. While it hurts me both physically and mentally to have trouble running 2o miles and running it "slow" I just kept reminding myself at how blessed I am to have healed as fast as I have and to even be able to be out running at all.

Hope everyone racing at SOB 50km had a great day!

Coastal Campin'

We did our inaugural camping trip with the new tent trailer: a QuickSilver 10.0 by Living Lite.

We went out with the Mavros to the Jessie Honeyman State park near Florence, Oregon. We had a blast...sometimes literally with all the sand blowing around!


We arrived on Wednesday, July 4th. Pretty much by the time we had set up, eaten and lit a fire it was time for bed. I did sneak in a short 4 mile run to stretch out the legs and do some exploring.

The tent trailer is great. Sets up quickly, is large inside and has running water and electricity. Good thing as we have many, many camping trips planned for the year!

We stayed on the C-loop of the campground and I highly recommend this loop for people with kids. C 134 was a large campsite close to the restrooms but off the main path so the roads are way less busy. There was some road noise from Highway 101 that can be annoying in the early morning.
Some parts of B-loop looked pretty good as well.


On Thursday we started the day with hitting the Sea Lion Caves just north of Florence. This is a major tourist trap but it is good to do once every 10 years or so. The views of the coast are amazing and the sea lions did impress the kids. In the afternoon we hit the "beach". A dune comes down into Cleawox Lake on the southern side. It was windy and not terribly warm but we did some fun swimming and explorer of the water and dunes.




On Friday we attempted to go out to the actual Oregon coast. It is beautiful but there is a reason the Oregon coast does not have any population: cold and windy in July. We lasted about 20 minutes hunkered down in a makeshift windbreak. We packed up and headed inland back to Cleawox Lake. It was warm and toasty on the northern beach near the camp store and was great for swimming.


For the early afternoon activity we did a dune walk with the camp ranger and then headed out on our own for a real challenge: scale the highest dune in the area. Cole led the way to the top and then we all got really basted with the blowing sand. Again the views were simply amazing! The dunes extend for about 47 miles from Florence down to Coos Bay. Some sections really make you feel like you are out in the desert. Great fun and adventures with hair, mouth and shoes full of sand!



After some quick refueling at the campsite with some poptarts, we went out in a rented canoe on the Cleawox for about 1 hr of adventure and battling the wind. Leah and Cole were great at telling us which direction we were supposed to be going in :-)



Saturday was a full day at the beach on Cleawox Lake. The lake was less windy and at one point the girls even got to take off their jackets :-)
As well, I also accomplished my first sand sculpture of the year a sea turtle. These have pretty much become a Swanson family tradition whenever enough sand is available.

The other great news is that my ankle is really started to get back in the groove. I went out for runs each day with about half trail / half road. My leg still generally aches but the strength is quickly returning. I was still bummed to miss the Foot Traffic flat on the 4th...but Trisha did me proud running a strong race!