long beach

Anders and I took a long weekend and headed out to the coast. Long Beach sits very close to the Oregon border, and it is the cutest little beach town! It has a lot of charm, great restaurants and a lot of outdoorsy things to do. I highly recommend this little town if you are looking for an easy coastal getaway. Here are our recommendations!

Stay: 

Adrift Hotel - this is an eco-friendly lodge that sits right on the beach. They rent bicycles to guests for free, have a cute restaurant with live music most nights, a game room with shuffle board and ping pong and lots of board games and DVDs for your use. Also, it's dog friendly!

Do:

Bike or walk the 8 mile boardwalk along the beach! You can also drive your car straight onto the beach, which is fun

Hiking at Cape Disappointment state park is a must. There are a lot of trails, but we chose the Cape Disappointment trail, which is easy and around 4 miles long. It takes you to the lighthouse at the mouth of the Columbia River and past Fort Canby that you can explore. It's set up to give you a lot of history about the fort. 

Eat:

Cottage Bakery & Delicatessen - THE BEST DONUTS ON THE PLANET. They are so good that I made Anders stop there again on our way out of town.

Captain Bob's Chowder - get the smoked salmon chowder!

Laurie's Homestead Breakfast House - huge portions, delicious food, lots of character

our weekend

 One house. Ten adults. Eight kids. A 40th birthday. A pinata and a helium shark.

count the references

Anders says the Twilight Franchise, which is set in Forks, WA, is the best thing to happen to that town. This tiny little town on the Olympic Peninsula is home to only 3,532 people with the economy’s money mainly coming from the timber industry. I think it took us all of three minutes to drive through the town when we were over there, but, in that three minutes, I was able to capture six references to Twilight. I find this to be rather impressive. I’m sure I missed many, but I have to give props to the folks of the town for their ability to capitalize on a good thing!

Anders would like everyone to know that this is not actually his hat. He was simply modeling it for the picture.

olympic peninsula, part II

The Washington coast is quite different than any coast I ever visited when I was growing up. I’m of the floppy hat, sunscreen, pretty ladies in small bikinis and rum drinks class of beaches, so the Washington coast always requires a bit of a mind shift. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the NW beaches, it’s just that it’s a whole different ballgame. It’s cold and rugged and usually requires many layers of clothing. I like it, though. It offers things that warm weather beaches can’t such as whale watching and clam digging and cozying up under a blanket while drinking a hot toddy. We stopped at many beaches throughout our Olympic Peninsula visit; spending a lot of time exploring the cliff sides, looking for star fish in tide pools and attempting to fly a kite (we never could get the spirit bird to take flight. Note to self…$10 kites might not be the best value). Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

This picture of Anders and Maggie has to be my favorite of the whole trip. What a good looking family I have!

As mentioned in yesterday's post, if you have a facebook account, you can see all the pictures from the trip here.

olympic peninsula, part I

Anders, the pup and I spent the weekend traveling all around the Olympic Peninsula; driving roughly 400 miles and covering as much of western Washington as we could in three days. Our home base was the Quinault Lodge in the Quinault Rain Forest, but we also spent a lot of time visiting the coastal beaches, stopping in small towns and completing the 101 loop around the peninsula. Our lodge had no TV and no cell reception, which made it nearly impossible to do anything but relax. On Saturday, we spent the morning on a 4 mile hike through the rain forest; taking in the large trees and the beauty of place. It was the perfect way to spend the weekend before Anders starts his crazy Christmas work schedule and the busyness of the holiday kicks in.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the lodge and our hike. 

You can look at all the pictures from our trip on my facebook page (you have to have an account, though), but I'll also be back tomorrow with my favorite beach shots!