Beverly Beach

The next beach over from Otter Crest is a beautiful white sand beach. We spent two days playing at Beverly beach.


The water was painfully cold, but a lot of the kids played in the ocean still.



Tessa had so much fun making ice cream with Caitlyn.


All the boys played a few games of rugby.

Rockwell and Ammon did a few races on the beach.

Gary helped Rockwell and Jacob catch a few creatures in the ocean. I don't know what they were, but Rockwell sure loved that!

And Grandpa did what Grandpa does best. :)

Matt, Gary, Kyle, EJ and I went surfing one day. That was so much fun!! I just loved spending that time with them! And trying something new and hard and super fun. We had some good laughs getting our wetsuits on. I think at one point each of us truly didn't believe we would ever actually get it on. :) Gary and Kyle have been surfing once before, so they helped us all get the hang of it. My nephews are such good kids. Kyle went out of his way to help me. After a while the waves got pretty big and I was having trouble getting out far enough to get any good ones before they broke. EJ gave me his board that was a little bigger, and Kyle towed me out far enough that I could get the waves at the right time. They're very thoughtful teenage boys!

And don't even get me started on Caleb in this picture! I laugh every time I see it. :) 

Otter Crest Beach

Otter Crest Beach is just down the stairs from the condos. I was telling Julie how Paul kept saying, "This is not what I was expecting" when we first went down to the beach. She said it's 'beach' that throws people off, and that we should call it the coast instead. This beach is definitely more of a coast than a beach, but we had a ton of fun there.

Out little family hiked into Devil's Punchbowl the first morning, and had fun exploring the coast and seeing all the sea life there.

This is Devil's Punchbowl at low tide. It fills up at high tide. Damon and I are standing inside it in the picture below.

  

  

The waterfall on the beach was a big hit.

We played on Otter Crest Beach with the rest of the family later that day.

Lindy was helping Rockwell wash some sand off his feet, and I watched him just stare at her the whole time. He ran over to me and told me that she looks just like me. She's my twin niece. :)

Rockwell had a lot of fun changing the route the stream was taking. He also loved showing me how strong he was with each log he lifted.

    

  

Oregon

The Ham Family went to Oregon in July. We stayed on the coast, at Otter Crest. It is absolutely beautiful there! We had a great view from our balcony, and we loved falling asleep to the sound of the waves every night.

I love how it's so lush and green on the coast.

The grounds at Otter Crest are beautifully-kept.

We could see whales every day. They were so close to the shore, we could watch them from our balcony. I loved that! You can see a whale's spout spray in this picture.

The views and sunsets never get old!

Otter Crest has a cool little tram that you can take up to your room if you don't want to walk up hundreds of stairs. :) The kids thought it was awesome! 

  

We took two days to make the drive to the coast. The kids were so excited to get to our hotel in Pendleton and run laps around the outside of it. 

We stopped in Portland and tried VooDoo Doughnuts. We've seen it spotlighted on the Food Network for years, so we figured we might as well try them out while we were in Portland. They were good doughnuts, but Paul and I agreed they weren't quite good enough to wait in an hour-long line again.