Rockaway Beach, OR

Oregon Pictures

If I had to describe the vacation in a sentence it would go like this: The trip was perfectly perfect.
I never felt rushed or bored, weather was flawless, company was amazing, and timing was perfect... wonderful in every way.

Brittany, with her generous heart, drove Jed and I to the Philly airport at 5:30 am. Our flight was at 7:30am and we flew to Seattle, WA. From there, we jumped on a little airplane and flew to Portland. I've never been on a little airplane. I could see the rotating blade on the wing from my seat. Flying over the Rockies was an experience to say the least. The snow topped mountains were beautiful, but I couldn't take a picture for my camera was in our checked bag. We saw Mount Everest in the distance. I think the landscaping in the whole trip was my favorite part. Jed laughed at me because I was like a wide-eyed giddy little girl with my face pressed up against the airplane window screaming about every cool thing I saw.

Landed, got the rental car, ate at Noodles & Company (one of our favs) and went to his sister's house to get the key for the beach house.

Jed's nephew, Corbin, was adorable. He's 3 now and his little brother, Finnegan (Fin for short), is about 1. Corbin showed us ALL his toys, even his Quad which he did "tricks" on. From there we went to Benny's house (where we were crashing for the night). Benny was hilarious. Jed and I cracked up the whole night from taking a trip to the Vietnamese Grocery Store (to make spring rolls) to watching the Office.

The next morning we had an awesome breakfast at "Biscuits" and drove to Rockaway Beach.

Jed wanted to take me to the beach as soon as we got there. So we went there and took alot of pictures. The next day Benny came and we went on our hike. Looking back, I don't know what we were thinking or how we did it. The path whined back and forth up the mountain. Jed spotted a "short cut" which we all thought it would lead us up to the next loop. A short cut that should only take 1 min and cut off about 5 min. I don't know what made us keep going.... I guess we kept thinking that we'd meet the path soon. It def. turned out to be an animal made path up the steepest mountain I've ever climbed. We blazed our own path straight up after about an hour of dodging giant spiders, huge animal holes, and bear poo. Up had to be the only way to go to try to find the REAL trail. The mountain was so steep that we crawled on all fours. I kept envisioning us on that TV show "I can't believe I'm still alive". If someone just tripped or stumbled they were going to roll down the mountain to their death. What if we saw a bear.... we couldn't run. Moreover, what the heck was making all these holes? Badgers? Foxes? It didn't help that Jed screamed every time he thought one of those stupid quarter sized spotted spiders were on him. I said "Jed, from now on you have to scream the thing your screaming about". Like "SPIDER!!" if you see a spider. "BADGER" if you see a Badger. Finally we came across an access road. Still not the trail, but it was human made. The three of us had a sigh of relief, because we thought it was over. Ha... if we only knew we were done yet. We heard voices! So Benny went ahead to see if he could find the trail. And he ended up finding it! Only...... it was about 300 feet down on the other side. If we thought going up was hard, down was worse. We all had falls, but falling backward and sliding down on our butt was alittle safer. Once we got to the trail we followed it to the summit. The view (which you'll see in the pictures) was worth it all. Looking at where the mountains meets the coast from the highest peak was amazing. Needless to say, we took the actual path all the way down.

To Be Continued!