Joshua took me to the coast last weekend for a birthday present. We spend Friday and Saturday exploring the area around the Three Capes Scenic Drive. The drive turned out to be not as scenic as we expected, but the area was beautiful and we found some great spots we are looking forward to visiting again.
Friday it was rainy on and off for most of the day, but the drive up 101 was still beautiful.
This was the first of the three capes, and the spot where we stopped to eat lunch.
Our campground was at the second cape, Cape Lookout. We got checked in and were going to go on a short hike nearby, but it started raining pretty heavily so we returned to the shelter of the van and drove down the road a bit to a place where we had a view of the water and played cribbage instead.
We enjoyed watching and listening to the rain throughout the day and seeing all the mists and clouds.
We were glad we weren't planning to eat at our table since it turned out to be in a large puddle. We had delicious breakfast burritos for dinner and while we were eating the sun came out.
We decided to walk down to the beach and were glad we did because the sky was beautiful.
I call this guy "the storm cloud that ate up the sky."
It was getting pretty cold and we were concerned that the big storm cloud was going to start raining on us, so we headed back to our campsite for the night. By the next morning, the rain had moved on and it was a beautiful sunny day.
We took a walk along the beach after breakfast.
There were tons of these blue jellyfish all along the beach. We also saw a dead seal, but that was rather gross, so I didn't take a picture.
There were lots of pretty flowers and plants growing around the campground.
The third cape was Cape Meares, were we saw the Octopus Tree and had more great views of the ocean.
We also toured the Cape Meares Lighthouse, which was neat.
We had a picnic lunch before continuing up the road towards Tillamook.
We got a two-foot piece of beef jerky from the Tillamook Country Smoker and toured the Tillamook Cheese Factory.
Unfortunately for us, they weren't making cheese because it was Saturday, but it was still fun to look at all the equipment, sample cheese, and get ice cream.
After enjoying our ice cream in the sunshine (which was a bit too bright for picture taking), we headed home down I-5, which ended up being a pretty drive also. It was a wonderful and relaxing couple of days and so nice to spend some time together away from the busyness of school and work.
