Friday Flights and Footsteps....

"F" didn't leave much options for titles for today so I had to stretch it a bit....Here it goes:

I had only two plans for Friday---get to a beach and end up in Beaverton, OR, to eat dinner with some friends.  In looking at our actual physical paper atlas, I noticed "World Kite Museum and Hall of Fame" and it was located at Long Beach, Washington.  It was just off Hwy. 101 which allowed us to continue on our preferred route through western Washington, so Thursday night, we decided it was a "go."  We like kites, we like the beach, and we like flying kites on the beach.  Great way to spend the day before heading to the Portland area.

And it was a great stop--kites, the beach. The only thing that didn't work was the flying of kites on the beach--unpredictable wind.

View to the west and the ocean as we traveled south on Hwy. 101.

and then the green returned and the road was crowded with greenery and trees on both sizes.

This museum is located in Long Beach, Washington, about 3 blocks from the actual Long Beach.  They said that it is the longest continuous sandy beach in the US--about 26 miles.  They have an annual kite flying contest here for several days in mid-August.  Throughout the museum they had framed posters of these yearly contests which were serious works of art.  They also had a video running of recent contests.  It was amazing to see hundreds of kites in the air at the same time for all different types of competitions.

Looking down from the balcony to the gift shop-

Upstairs, the displays were divided up into countries in one section--China, Japan, Korea, and Indonesia.  They had another section that futured certain types of kites and the people and stories that made them famous.  The last section was the Hall of Fame area where they talked about the use of kites in wars.  All of it was very interesting if you like history and kites.

 Jena and I made our own kites at a kite-making station.

 Then it was off to the beach.....

Not really a swimming beach which certainly is a waste of a good beach like this.  There were some people in the water, but mostly people playing on the sand.  The water is still quite cold in this area of the ocean.

 A brief moment that our kite flew........

And there are...were the footsteps,  in the sand, before the waves smoothed them out!!  (I had to tie the title in somehow!)

Glad that we had the chance to bring Jena to the northwestern coast of the Pacific Ocean.  The only thing that will be better is seeing all of my kids and grandkids in a Washington/Oregon beach, playing in the water and the sand.  (Probably not this one since it has the whole "big waves, strong undertow" thing going on.)

And then it was back on Hwy. 101 and on the road to Beaverton.  It was tempting to show Jena some of the places that we had visited a few years ago related to the travels of Lewis and Clark as we drove right by some of them.  Jena likes history, too.  But, again, it goes back to 'there is so much to see and to enjoy.'  The world is a gorgeous place and the people who have gone before are so interesting and teach us so much about being human.  So we bypassed those places as we drove, giving Jena some verbal information about what happened along the way.....not sure the verbal history lesson was as good as visiting the spots!!  Good review for me and Gary!

We ended this trip's travels on Hwy. 101 when we crossed over the Astoria Bridge and turned on to State road 202.  (A few years ago, Gary and I traveled from Astoria down to Newport, Oregon--so that will leave us the southern section from LA to Newport, Oregon. to complete the route.  Jessica and I once drove most of it from San Francisco to LA in 1985, but I think we veered to I-5 before reaching the actual end of it.)

The mouth of the Columbia River looking upstream to the Astoria Beach

 Log trucks were everywhere. 

Crossing the bridge...no walking allowed except one Saturday morning a year when they close it for a race.

Astoria is perched on the tip of Oregon with water on two sides and coastal mountains surrounding it.

 A back view of the bridge after we crossed into the Oregon side....

Again, these log trucks were impressive and the wood was gorgeous.....however, Gary got over it during our mountain drive with some many slow moving log trucks along the way.

 

Diligent readers of the blog (who have excellent memories of what we have done) will recall that one of the things I was proud of during our trip to Oregon a few years ago where we were joined by Gary's family was that we had traveled back and forth from the Portland area and the coast four times and had taken a different route each time.  As we were once again traveling from the coast to Portland, I was able to find another route we had not traveled from Astoria going southeast through the little range of coastal mountains on State Road 202.  It was a beautiful drive.

It had small little mountain meadows and valleys...

Some mountain climbing with trees everywhere...

And with some luck, we arrived to our friends' home--Reed and LaFawn Smith.  They had prepared an amazing dinner for us and allowed us to park our RV in the driveway which was perfect.  The Smiths were our friends since we lived in West Jordan in 1984-1987.  They were part of a group of four couples who we played games with, went to the temple with, raised our young little kids together, and even went on weekend trips together.  It was as if no time had passed as we started talking and didn't stop....and of course, there was lots of game playing involved in the evening.  Judds and Horners--the challenge is on--we want to gather and play Double Rook for old time's sake.  Let's make a plan.

Photos were taken in the morning before we headed out to our next adventure.

View from their house----

Jena's photo of Gary, LaFawn, Reed , and me

Flights of kites and memories; Footsteps in the sand and in our hearts!  Another perfect day of traveling!