Day 7 - Cannon Beach!

Darrin got the girls up EAAAARLY to go out and do some beachcombing at low tide before everything was all picked over. Still didn't find much. I enjoyed sleeping in.
After breakfast, we headed to Ecola State Park near Cannon Beach where we got our best views of Tillamook Rock lighthouse.

Above is with my camera - no good telephoto! Below is with the digital zoom on Darrin's camera

And some beautiful panoramic views:


Ecola (which is VERY different from both Ebola and e. coli) is a very wooded penninsula. Many places have no vegetation at ground level because sunlight can't get through. In places where the trees are thin enough for light to get through, there are tons of ferns all over the ground.

After hiking around for a bit,

looking for pillbugs without luck, and having a picnic lunch, we headed over to another part of Ecola, a place called Indian Beach. We waded around and looked at tidepools. Watched some surfers, too.



(raise your hand if you can't wait for high tide to come back)



After we were done there, we drove over into Cannon Beach and walked around the beach. It is quite a busy place, there were people zipping all around in these unusual bikes:

And lots of creative sandcastles:




We walked all the way to haystack rock:


And we'd timed it to be there at low tide, but found that this was not very low for a low tide. There were some nice tidepools to look at, but the volunteers there were telling everyone it would be much lower tide the next morning, with much, much better tidepools to explore. We did see ONE sea star and ONE Dungeness crab.





When we were done exploring, we walked back into town and had dinner at a nice seafood place called Doogers. Darrin & I both got a mixed seafood platter with all kinds of good stuff, and the kids got tamer meals of clam chowder, shrimp and chicken. Later Brynn got mad that she's had chicken because this was a seafood place and chicken isn't seafood. But when I reminded her that she had PICKED chicken over the seafood options, she stopped whining. (Thankfully!) But all three girls were brave enough to try the calamari from our dinners, even if just so they could tell their friends they'd eaten squid.

After dinner, we wandered around Cannon Beach looking at shops and stuff. Darrin found the perfect place to sit and rest for a bit:

And mom, here's another one for you:

And once it got dark, we went back to our hotel and watched more Olympics.