OREGON COAST Day 3

Another wonderful day of beaches and seafood.  Really, what more could you ask?  Oh yeah, how about a sand dune?

There are a lot of sand dunes along the Oregon coast, some of them in, to me, surprising places.  Like these giant dunes right behind the Fred Mayer big box store in Florence.  

These are really cool.  And big.  

And fun. 

After we played there for awhile, we went on, heading for Newport, Lincoln, and eventually Portland.  

On the way to Newport, we stopped at a beach called seal rock.  No seals there, but we found a cool driftwood fort on the beach.  

These are something that people build frequently on beaches in Oregon,

and they are generally made so you can go inside them, though I was a bit nervous about the whole thing collapsing.  Apparently there are rules -- like you can't tear down someone else's fort, but you can add to it or reconfigure it.  You can't steal the wood out of someone else's fort to build your own.  You basically have to leave one there until the ocean washes it away, which usually happens within a couple of weeks. 

Although the skies were overcast most of the day, it was amazingly warm.  

We stopped at old bay Newport for lunch.  

We saw a couple of nice shops with some really good glass, but really didn't shop.  We had lunch at Mo's.  John had clam chowder AND chicken tacos, and I had oyster stew.  All of it was delicious.  

When we left Newport, we went on to Lincoln and visited this wonderful garden, called the Connie Hansen garden.  It's just a very large lot in a regular neighborhood, but it's really cool. 

We arrived in Portland about 7, checked into our hotel and went to dinner at a cute nearby restaurant called Milo's. I had a delicious portobello sandwich, because I'm really craving some vegetables. 

Tomorrow we go to Art in the Pearl.