Reach the Beach...

while that is an old 80's album title by The Fixx... that has absolutely nothing to do with my blog post today.

Recently, we rented a beach house in the sleepy little town of Manzanita on the Oregon Coast. It was completely furnished with wall-to-wall kids, legos, and marble tower components. Well, okay... the kids we furnished ourselves. Did I mention that there were 4 families sharing the beach house? Hence, the wall-to-wall kiddedness. Certainly our 2 small angels wouldn't provide a wall-to-wall capacital feeling. Unless they were hopped up on fruit snacks.

This was the 9th Annual Beach Trip. We have been to other choice NW locations... notably La Push... with the musty, saggy old beach motel rooms that certainly did NOT sleep 8 adults comfortably. And the other noteworthy memory of the trip to La Push was our field trip to The Hoh Rainforest... which was "just down the road"... yeah, 4 hours later on a switchback logging road we finally reached the Hoh... Mike's memory for distances is not always trustworthy. But if you long to see moss oozing from trees... the Hoh is the place for you. Lots of moss. The capital of moss.

But I'm getting off track... this was a lovely town, lovely house, totally moss-free. The sun shone, the waves crashed, the sand stuck in all those hard-to-reach places, it was the beach experience that poets extoll and hearken. Hence, my current need to extoll and hearken.

Our favorite side trip destination has been The Death Cliffs at Hug Point. Well, at least Mike likes to describe them to newbies as the place where his nephew almost died last year. A strong selling point to mothers of small children... but back to my story. Last year, when we visited, the tide was coming in and there was the occasional "sneaker" wave that came in a lot farther than any of the others before. One minute, you're exploring a cave and the water seems miles away, the next minute you're scrambling up the rocks escaping the onslaught of frothy water that sends your discarded shoes and towels out to sea. The thrill-seekers were all about the near death experience and clinging to the rock walls as the undertoe beckoned... I had my moments as I watched Mike scoop little Riley up just before she was knocked down and hopelessly lost to the deep. Well... it seemed that dramatic at the time. But Hug Point really is a cool place to explore. I'd go back.

It was all lovely... until the vomitting started. Those stories are not worthy of extolling or hearkening... I'll just leave it at that.