Coos Bay!!!

Ok so on our way down to Coos Bay we had to stop and do some tide pool checking at the "Devil's Blowhole" (named because it sounds like a whale spouting)

 Jeff made some seagull friends

 This was a neat hole in the rocks that water would come up out of

 Jeff found the only really neat thing in the pools, a star fish!

 The water had a very green tint to it.

 Here we are on the road again

 Going through a cool looking tunnel

 Another really neat looking beach, perfect for the sea lions I am sure

 Here we are at Coos Bay! And this is the crow who decided that we needed to get up at 7:30 in the morning! Behind the crow is where out campsite was.  We tried one campsite, but it was full, so we drove back the way we came to another one, and found that it still had plenty of tent sites! Hooray!!! So we set up our tent (taking all of 1 minute to do because it is a pop out tent) at about 9:30pm that night.  As I lay down on the sleeping bag I closed my eyes and I could hear the waves crashing onto the shore.  I LOVED it! I got to fall asleep to real waves and ocean sounds!!! I was in Heaven!!!!  We didn't know how close we were to the shore line because it was too dark to see.  In the morning we only had to go about a 1/2 a mile and we were there!  It was so nice!

 Jeff was too scared to take his flip flops off to wiggle his toes in the sand :o)

 I took mine off and just waded about in the water for a bit looking for shells for the kids

 I just thought this was a neat shot!

 And here come our new friends!

 This little girl kept bringing us drift wood to play fetch with, when we looked at her tags to see what her name was it was very enlightening, it said "owner surfing".  So we played fetch for a bit longer

 Then we got back in the car to look for brunch.  And boy did we find a good one!

Jeff had seen this little place that did sushi as we had come through North Bend and so back we went to check it out.  Now for me sushi is ok, I have never been a huge fan, but I don't despise it either.  However I have been converted!  That was by far some of the best food I have ever had!!! Jeff was even able to have some of the Green lipped Mussles from New Zeland that he would always eat down there.  The size of portions they gave you too were big enough almost to feed the family!  After that we went to Coquill which was just south east of Coos Bay to do some family history research for my mom.  We walked into the Library and asked the person at the front desk if they knew where the old Pioneer Cemetery was.  At that half the staff got choked up and handed us a book that someone had been compiling on the local cemeteries.  We found out that she had just passed away a day or so before.  We did feel pretty bad.  We found the graves we were looking for and found out that there was still one member of the family who was still living.  So we looked her up in the phone book and drove out to see a very nice 80 year old woman who had lost her husband a couple of years ago.  After we chatted with her we left and headed up back north to Eugene where my cousin Amelia and her family lived.  We didn't get any pictures there because we were having such a good time enjoying their company! Amelia and George and her kids were so nice to let us crash at their place! Their kids were about the same ages as our kids and they were very much alike. So it was a nice change of pace and we wished we had brought our kids up to play with theirs.  The next morning we headed over to My Aunt and Uncle's house (Amelia's parents) and had a wonderful breakfast, after which my aunt Audrey took us on a fabulous 10-12 mile bike ride all throughout Eugene! It was so lovely with all the parks and being right on the river!  A wonderful college campus, and at the end a trip to the famous Voodoo Donuts shop to try one of their unusual donuts! (they were ok, but Krispy Kreme out here beats them hands down). After chatting a bit more it was time to head off back up to Portland to stay the night so we could try and find that Chinese garden before we flew back home the next day.