Day 3 Newport area

Darrin & I started off the day by leaving the kids in the hotel room and going for a long walk on the beach. It was nice and we enjoyed having some time to talk without the kids hearing every word. And of course, we took some pictures:


After we cleaned up and got ready, we attended church in the Newport Ward. Brynn was sad that she couldn’t kill time in Sacrament meeting looking to see where all her friends were sitting. But we’d saved a brand new Friend magazine for her and that helped.
After church, we headed to the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area. Yes, that is the official mouthful of a name. We had a picnic at the visitors’ center, excuse me, I mean “Interpretive Center”! Nothing in Oregon has a visitors’ center, but everything has an interpretive center. We watched some kind of large bird glide in circles over us as we ate, and listened to the sound of the waves. After lunch, we walked around to the lighthouse. It is a beautiful lighthouse, tall and white and on a bluff overlooking the ocean.


We got to go inside and climb to the top. Brynn really wanted to do it, until she got about 75% of the way up and looked down. She started screaming and crying. But we were able to help her be brave enough to get to the landing just below the lens. We all got the chance to climb halfway up the last set of stairs and pop our head up in the lamp area. I took a few pictures of the view



And the lens - a first-order fresnel lens - the brightest available in the 1800s and imported frmo France!

And even a reflected self-portrait

Brynn freaked out and refused to go any further. Until I told her it was time to go back down. I think going back down scared her more than anything, so in an effort to delay going down the stairs, she said she wanted to go look out. And she did!

But she was very scared going down and we had to take it very slow and with Darrin & I each holding a hand, on in front of her and one behind. Darrin got her a pin that said “I survived the climb up Oregon’s tallest lighthouse!” and she wore it proudly for a few days. As you can see, she now loves that lighthouse!

We took some other fun trick pictures with the other girls


Out behind the lighthouse there was a bald eagle sitting in a tree!

And there was a park ranger there who let us look through her telescope and binoculars at all the birds on the rocks.

We then took the long stairs down to cobble beach, a beach with round stones instead of sand. They make a very different, beautiful sound when the waves go in and out.



There were some tide pools and rocks to explore as well, but not much wildlife. Darrin climbed up on some big rocks and found the best tide pools up there:


The view of the lighthouse from Cobble Beach was pretty incredible, too.

Brynn was doing her best to build “rock castles” since she couldn’t build a sand castle on this beach:

We then headed back to the hotel and tried to decide what to do for dinner. Ended up going to a restaurant called “Georgie’s” where they had the best clam chowder of the trip. I could just barely see the lighthouse out the window the restaurant.



Then we went over to see the Yaquina Bay lighthouse, a smaller, older lighthouse that looks over the entrance to the bay. It was closed, which is why all the windows are shuttered, so we were not able to go inside this one.

We also got some good shots of the Newport bridge, which is very close to this lighthouse.

Then we went back to the hotel and watched some Olympics before going to bed. After the girls were in bed and the TV/lights were off, I watched the moon come up and light up the waves. It was beautiful.