well vacation wasn't a total bust

We were all excited to going to Moab for the Blazer Bash but the new old car aka "The Beast" had different plans. We got to mom & dad's and discovered transmission fluid all over the back of our car due to a leak. One night at mom & dads turned into 3 nights...thanks for letting us stay longer then planned. Four days & $600 later we headed back home. We weren't going to chance getting stuck in the middle of nowhere on the way to Utah, as much as Keith wanted us to still come down, we just couldn't do it. There will be other Blazer Bashes.

So we adjusted our vacation plans. We spent a few days at home staying up late & sleeping in.

Then we went to the beach for a couple of days. It ended up being beautiful in Lincoln City...it was sunny, a little windy with just a bit of a chill in the air. We took a walk on the beach and then watched the sun set from the balcony of our room. While the sun was setting we watched a kid surfing...you don't see much of that in Oregon!!

I took this picture on my morning walk on the beach. It was another beatiful day and since it is now off season there weren't too many people around.

On our way home from the beach, we stopped at the oldest covered bridge in Oregon. It is located on private property but the owners welcome people to see it. The owners saved the bridge from be destroyed by the county. The county gave them the disassembled bridge and then they rebuilt it on an exsisting concrete bridge that crossed a creek on their property. It was a beatiful piece of Oregon history.

After the beach, Jack spent a couple of days working on the beast so that we could take it out 4-wheeling. We went out to Browns Camp which in the coastal range on the way to Tillamonk. We got lucky with the weather again and had another beautiful day in Oregon. It was sunny and warm!! And with the beautiful weather we got breathtaking views of the mountains. We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful state and live so close to the mountains and the beach. We had a GREAT time!!! I can't wait to go again.We totally didn't fit under this tree, lucky for us there was a alternate trail that took us around the fall tree, although that wasn't always the case.

As you can see here, we added a few new scraps to the truck...you can almost see the orignal red paint... and even brought some tree along w/ us.

We got the truck in couple of really tight spots. There were a couple of times that I really thought that we were not going to get through the maze of trees. At one point Jack told me to get out and guide him through a tough spot on the trail. I was really bad at it. I couldn't see anyway of getting the truck past these 2 trees. Thank goodness we had a couple of guys w/ us that knew how to get big trucks out of tight spots.

We decided that our vacation started out bad but it ended with a great time together with friends out in the wilderness of the beautiful state that we live in. It was all GOOD!!