{ two weeks ago at this time 6.19.12 }

:: Tuesday, June 19th ::

We stopped for lunch on the first day of our trip and told our waitress our plans of heading south on Hwy 101.  Hunter asked what was up ahead of us for us to expect, and she responded with "Trees, trees and more trees."  She couldn't have been spot on!  On this day of the trip, we drove through beautiful, lush and green forests!  We were both like little kids "OH!  Look over there!  OH MY GOSH LOOK AT THE OCEAN!  The trees are touching OVER the roads!"  I never got sick of the green, that's for sure.

I am so proud of us in that all of the days we were camping, we cooked our own breakfast, lunch { with the exception of the first day }, and dinner on our own!  This day we pulled over to the side of the road and made tuna wraps with some leftover chips from the night before.  Lunch with a view?  I'd say.

The night before, we drank up all of our beer and wine supply ::GASP!:: so it really was a good thing we were so close to Rogue Brewery in Oregon!  It was the perfect excuse to get out of the car and stretch our legs a little bit while enjoying some samples of their beer.  We were able to pick up our favorites and stock up for the rest of the trip.  CRISIS AVERTED.  ; >

And of course - we couldn't get back in the truck without visiting yet another beach.  Sick of seeing sky, water and sand photos yet?  

Too bad.

There were so many cherry stands on the side of the highway, so we finally stopped to see what the fuss was all about, and man we didn't regret it!  $8 of fresh and warm from the sun goodness.

And here is the part where I preach yet again about how a good campsite finds you.  On this day, we got dangerously close to settling for a mediocre campsite.  We had drove through this particular campground, but noticed all of the beach facing sites had "Reserved" tags on them, and all the lush beautiful sites were so close to the highway.  We decided on a site that was in the middle of the ocean and highway.  No real views but there were so many trees on the site, Hunter sold me with "We can put up the hammock here!"   WELL OK.  That man knows the way to my heart.  He ventures out to find where to pay, when we both realize that just because a site has "Reserved" on it, didn't mean it was necessarily reserved for that DAY.  So we stayed here on the 19th, and found the mother of all campsites that had a Reserved sign..............but not until the 21st.   

SCORE!!!!!!!!!!

Yet again, I sat at the site while Hunter made sure what we were doing was legit.  And sure enough....it was all ours for the night.  This one was especially cool because in addition to being completely surrounded by trees, we had our very own little balcony to the beach!

 

You can probably see the "balcony" best in the above picture, but the ocean and sky is a little burned out.  I only snapped a few pix of the site on my phone before tossing it in the truck and not giving it another glance until the next morning.  This night, we had some yummy cheese and crackers with wine for our appetizer, then took a super wonderful, soothing, picturesque and romantic walk down the beach.  Hand in hand, barefoot without a care in the world.  Literally.  He even asked me on the walk what was the most pressing issue on my mind at that point in time, and my answer was "Getting to the wineries on time tomorrow."  

Yup.  It was that rough.

That might have been in my top 5 favorite moments of the trip, that walk we had.  For dinner this night we cooked up some tofu, brown rice and a bunch of veggies for a stir fry.  Yummy.

 I now totally understand why people buy sound machines that sound like the ocean to help them sleep.  It's the most glorious and soothing soundtrack fall asleep to!

Pause.

I know, I know.  You all will be devastated to know that this post isn't doting on how wonderful and magical Hunter and my vacation was.  BUT!  It is doting on how wonderful and magical my friends are.

Last night we all got together to celebrate this guy.

It is so rare for everyone to be able to attend a dinner like this, so I was extra grateful for everyone's company last night.  I have such a difficult time putting into words how healing and simply beautiful this group of friends are.  There have been friendships in this group for 15+ years, relationships lasting over 25 years, and there may be a person who held another person on the day she was born.  I'll let you figure out who those two people are.  ; )  { Hint: My aunt is in the green blazer. }

We are all dysfunctional in our own ways, but when we are together - we couldn't function better.  We bicker, we fight, we laugh, we cry.  We try on each other's shoes, we tease each other's taste in clothing.  We hug, we kiss, we cheers every chance we get.  

We love.  And we love HARD.   

These fancy faces make it on my blog a lot { here, here, here },but they mean the absolute world to me.

I wish the love and friendship I have with this group on every one of you reading this right now.

*Thank you for all the great photos, Jen!

{ two weeks ago at this time 6.18.12 }

:: Monday, June 18th ::

I've got to tell you, sleeping in a tent, in a rainforest, DURING a rainstorm proved to be one of the best ways to have a restful nights sleep.  Ahh...

We woke up to a few little critters trying to join us for breakfast.  A slug and a big ol beetle.  But we said NO and kept our vittles for ourselves.  One of my favorite things to bring along camping is champers and orange juice for mimosas.  Something about drinking a nice cool mimosa at 7a in the morning is such a fun treat.  There is nowhere but camping you can get away with drinking a mimosa that early!

How dashing is my Hunter?  I love this pix of him.  Rawr.

After some time driving, driving, driving - we found the ocean again!  Don't let the blue skies fool you - it was still super chilly outside.  But it made for awesome cuddling up in the car and reading weather!

Wild roadside daises for daysies!  { not going to lie - I thought I was super clever when I thought that one up.  Daises.  Daysies.  So funny. }

Goodbye Washington, Helloooooooooooooo Oregon!

And helloooooo Oregon beaches!  A family friend of Hunter's recommended we spend some time in Cannon Beach for hiking, etc.  We only had enough time to drive through the town, walk on the (GLORIOUS) beach, and hit up a small market for our dinner that night.  Though we both agreed on how absolutely beautiful it was and it would most definitely be a place we would want to vacation at and rent one of the adorable little cottages! 

Like I've talked about before, we didn't do too terribly much planning as far as where we'd camp each night.  We always let the campsites find us { it may sound super corny, but next time you are on a camping adventure, just remember it and you will be stunned at how simple and astonishingly true that statement is! }.  One thing that keeps me giggling; there was a time or two we would get a planning bug up our you-know-whats and sit and look at a map trying to actually come up with, oh you know, a PLAN.  We would dissect every detail we could come up with, what roads to take, how far down the coast to get, what cities to stop in, what time to leave the mornings campsite....but none of the planning felt right to us.  So every conversation would end with "Let's just wake up, get in the car, and drive as far as we want to." And that sentence was the simplest and most perfect solution to any "planning" issue we might have.  

After Cannon Beach, we drove through one or two campsites we'd see on the map, and just really had a strong dislike for all of them.  Too overpopulated, too close to the highway, too noisy.  None of them were right.  We started driving through a 3rd campsite and Hunter said "Babe, we have to realize we probably won't get as good of a spot as we did last night..." and then we found this.  

Our home for the night; Night 3.  

We started driving through the campground and we saw the ocean so close, but couldn't quite get a feel for how the grounds were laid out.  We navigated our way following the sounds of the ocean, and found a strip of campsites.  We saw the waves breaking in front of us and saw a guy set up  in camp.  I immediately said { whined } "UGHHHHHHHHH that guy has the best spot in the whole place!" But Hunter kept driving until we got as far to the ocean as we could, and whattdya know?  Another campsite, only empty this time.  Both our eyes got HUGE and Hunter says "Go sit in the site, I'm going to go make sure it isn't taken for the night."  I didn't want to get my hopes up too high, because it was almost too good to be true.  

photo taken straight with Instagram, so I don't have the original picture to edit.  be still my OCD Graphic Design Filter heart.   life will go on if it doesn't match.

Where is this photo taken from, you ask?  Oh, let me tell you.  It was taken RIGHT where we put our tent up for the night.  Ohhhh it was so perfect.  We had the tent hidden in the trees a little bit, with the ability to walk all of 5 steps to the beach where we could have our dinner of bean, cheese and chili quesadillas with chips and salsa + wine/ beer, and our breakfast of cheese omelets and coffee.  I remember sitting there, watching the waves break, waiting for the sun to set and I say to Hunter "Man....next Monday is going to SUCK!" to which he reminded me that the next Monday we would still be on vacation, spending it with our good friends in SLC.  I went back to sipping my wine with a giant smile on my face.

This site was so soothing, beautiful and was just meant for us, for that night.  This campsite was most DEFINITELY my favorite campsite for June 18th.  

{ two weeks ago at this time 6.17.12 }

:: Sunday, June 17th ::

Wake up.  Oatmeal for breakfast.  Pack up shop.  Say goodbye { and Beth rattled off her list of favorite things from the site to the ocean }.  Back on the road!

We had just started venturing down the 101 when we had our first real dilemma of the trip.  Cut inland to Forks Washington, or keep on down the coast on the 101.

Guess what my answer was?

Yup.  That just happened.  I was pretty beside myself to finally see Forks WA!  It was pretty freaky to see exactly HOW MUCH presence Twilight had on the town.  Think lots of stars, cut outs of the actors/actresses on sides of buildings, signs like "TWILIGHT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD!"  But hey - I bet it was, and will still be, the biggest thing to EVER happen to that town!

The thing I love and miss oh so dearly about Washington/Oregon was how beautiful, stunningly, beautimus, fantastical, gorgeously, wonderfully schmunderfully green and lush everything was!  There was moss growing on the trees, which multiplied by the dozens.  

After driving inland after our Forks venture, we found our way back to the coast, and stumbled upon the most beautiful beach I have ever seen.  Ruby Beach!

This beach was so windy, rainy and cold - but easily my most favorite beach we came across on our trip.  

There were hundreds of thousands of millions of river rocks, piles of logs and fog for days.  I think my favorite part of Ruby Beach was how rugged and ugly the waves were.  They were so angry, loud, big and just wild - it was memorizing to watch!  It just had this extremely enchanting feel to it - like it was giving you a great big hug.  I know I probably sound like a coocoocachoo right now, but man alive was it wonderful being there.

I have to smile whenever I talk about our campsites, because we thought we were so organized with our maps, and looking ahead on Google Earth to see where all the good campsites were.  Every single site we visited that was found on a map etc., we hated.  Don't get me wrong - they were all beautiful, but just too over populated with RV's, tents and noise for our liking.  Hunter kept saying "A good campsite finds you."  And holy shizuka, that couldn't have proven to be more true!  This next night's site we found by taking a last minute turn off the road to try and find a Ranger Station to get a better idea of where we could call home for the night.  Turns out we didn't need the Ranger Station after all, because our home for the night most certainly found us.  

Every night, I would ask Hunter "Okay, which campsite has been your favorite so far?" to which he would always respond "How could I pick?  Every site has been perfect for that particular day.  There is no way that I could pick just one favorite." 

Damn.  That man is smart.

This particular evening, we found ourselves calling a rainforest home.  Yes, rainforest.  And yes it was as beautiful as it sounds.  We had gotten here earlier than we would get to our campsites most days, so we had a little extra time to dink around before it was time for dinner.  So what did I do you ask?  Set up the damn hammock and read my damn book!!!

This particular moment proved to be the most relaxing, peaceful and glorious moment that I had experienced in a long while.  I was reading Cutting for Stone { do not get me started on how amaze this book is.  Just a warning if you pick it up, make sure you are locked in a room alone for the final like 50 pages, so you don't have to look at your boyfriend with tears gushing down your face as you are sobbing and gasping for breath while trying to find Kleenex in the car. }, the lake quietly crashing off in the distance, cuddled in tight with a quilt, watching Hunter tinker around with the tent and other misc outdoorsey things.  Ohh...hello, happy place.

After about an hour or so of that, we got ourselves ready for a hike!  The trail wasn't far from where we were staying in the slightest, so off we went.  

After 5 miles of that, and about 3 waterfalls, 1 swamp, 2 old men, dozens of wild flowers, and gazillions of trees later, we made our way back to camp.  On the menu that evening was pasta with salmon and brussels sprouts.............with vino of course.  We fell asleep to the crisp air and light pitter patter of rain on our tent this evening.  So lovely.

Pitter...patter...

pitter............

..patter.

....pitter...

....

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.

.....

patter.

zzzzzzzzzzzz