Mia and I had what felt like our first real weekend of relaxing since moving to Oregon.  We’ve had a couple low key days, but nothing that resembled a true “leisure” weekend.

Friday night we quite literally did nothing but lounge around and watch TV and relax.
Saturday started with a nice bike ride with Mia.  It took a bit to get out into the country, but once out there we really had very little in the way of traffic.  Saw tons of other cyclists too.  This must be a really popular loop based on the groups we passed, got passed by or saw going in the other direction.
It was then a quick trip to the Beaverton Farmer’s Market again, and then home to chill until 4pm.  Juston and Laurel had purchased us all tickets to one of the Oregon Zoo Concerts.  The headlining band was Old Crow Medicine Show.  Not my typical genre of music, but these guys put on a really good live show.  I was quite impressed with them.
Did I mention that it was HOT today.  Like mid 90’s HOT.  One of the things we have had to adapt to out here is what time of day is peak warmth.  In NH the warmerst parts of the summer days is between 1-3pm.  Out here it is 5-7pm.  So while at the concert we were in the full blown heat until about 9pm when the sun started to go down and finally the temps were bearable.
The plus side is the humidity is pretty darn low by our standards.

So, Sunday was the killer day of our weekend.  We headed out to Cannon Beach after hitting up Donuts Plus.  Cannon Beach is most known for Haystack Rock, which makes an appearance in the movie Goonies.  At the end One Eye Willie’s pirate ship sets sail right past Haystack Rock.

Another odd thing to get used to is the beach time around here.  We arrived just about 11AM and found a parking spot pretty quickly.  If this had been Hampton or any other NH beach, we would have been screwed.  This all goes back to the warmest part of the day mentioned above.  There was maybe 100-150 people on the beach when we got there.  We had our choice or prime beach lounging spots.

Donut and the beach

Mia in her element

Pete & Mia and Haystack Rock

So the low tide at Cannon Beach leaves a ton of exposed area, thus around Haystack Rock are some tide pools and all sorts or marine life.  Huge starfish, crabs, sea anemone, mussels, etc.  It was all pretty cool. Plus on the rock itself are a bunch of different avian species making a life for themselves.

Sea creatures

perspective shot

HUGE starfish

We finished off the day with some iced coffee at Insomnia Coffee at their beach location, then the drive home.  It was 100 degrees when we got back to Portland!  Who said it doesn’t get hot here?  Plus “it rains all the time”……so far we’ve had it pretty good here.

I can’t wait for more adventure.  First Oregon 5K coming up this week too!

Thanks for reading

-Pete