Neskowin

Yesterday we took a trip to a new beach the kids haven't been to before. The last beach pictures I sent were from one of the major coastal tourist towns, Lincoln City. Lincoln City is a bustling, loud, crowded, windy, massive and exciting place. Definitely has it's own allure. 
Neskowin is a much quieter beach with many less people and no "tourist" vibe...by far one of my favorite places in Oregon!
To get to the beach after parking, you walk down a small sidewalk and follow a river around the corner to the beach itself. There are a lot of shallow places, the river forms warm pools (at least in comparison to the ocean itself!), and plenty of rock formations. It's a great place for smaller children who aren't ready for the wild western ocean. And as it turned out yesterday, the river was so amazing and so fun, we never made it to the beach itself.  :)

Evie tipped over in the shallows of the river by accident and froze her tiny lil' buns. Luckily, what belongs to her cousins belongs to her. She wrapped herself up in Rebecca's toasty hoody and found a convenient rock to recoup on.  

We spent HOURS building a dam and re-routing the river to create a small side river. Rebecca was in her glory, running around shouting, "Stop the river! Hurry, hurry! Grab a rock! Hurry and Stop That River!" This is the kind of activity tailor-made for my girl who never seems to have enough *actual* drama in her life.  :)

My little civic engineers!

Maybe we never made it to the beach because when we got there, it was covered by a rather impressive fog bank. I can imagine how intimidating that looks to small ones! The river is running to the left of the photo, the beach is around that cliff face to the right. 

It is very nearly impossible to get a picture of Jack. Most of the pictures I get of him never make it on to the blog, because they are like this. His really cute bum, running quickly away from the camera!

Evie testing her boundaries.  :)

Auntie Monster had brought TWO shovels. I think it was at least two hours before I saw Caiden without a shovel in his hands. He was VERY busy re-routing the river, although in contrast to his sister, I don't remember him saying more than a handful of words the whole time. He just picked up a shovel and got to work. 

Nobody's pants lasted long....

Flotilla of goldfish crackers!!! Once our side river was made, we spent the next hour disassembling it again. At one point, somebody dropped a cracker in the water by accident and we were all surprised to see it scoot under the WALL of our damn and come out the other side! It wasn't long before the entire bag of crackers was in the river!

Chasing the flotilla.

Bye bye fishies!!!

After a quick break for lunch, Auntie and Evie headed back home. The rest of the kids were definitely not ready to leave! We followed the fishies down the river for a while and found an EXCELLENT rock-throwing spot! The boys were handing out "wins" for hitting the tree stump with a rock. 

Eventually we made it around another bend of the river and the boys saw a nasty little water bug climbing on a rock. They immediately set to work turning over EVERY rock on the beach to Find More Bugs! Rebecca thought this was a disgusting occupation. She's off camera to the left, burying a stump. 

Look what Jack and I built!

Dead seal carcass. This was quite literally the single most disgusting smell I have ever smelled in my entire life. It was so atrocious that we just had to follow the smell to it's source...which turned out to be an absolutely revolting seal carcass. The picture just cannot do it justice. There were BUGS crawling in and out of the tar-looking insides. We could not find the head. The children were *impressed* to say the least. It was all I could do to keep them from running up and poking it. They settled for walking several circles around the entire thing to make sure they admired it from every direction possible. Jack is pretty sure that the seal must have been sick when the water was high, and couldn't swim back into the ocean when the water went down, so it was left on the sand and died. Rebecca and Caiden are absolutely convinced that the reason it's ribs are showing it because that's where the lion swiped at it with his paw. And then ate his head. Of course, the lion is full now and so he's sleeping off his meal in the woods and that's why there's no sign of him. Oh my goodness, children!

Always the sign of a great day. Caiden passed out in the car on the ride home.  :D