Brandon and I try to sneak away for a day or two a couple times a year. It asks a lot of our family and friends to take care of all the kids for us, but it's so good to catch a breath and get a little time to just unwind and have uninterrupted conversations. We love our kids and our crazy life but we also love escaping for a few days. This summer we found a place in Lincoln City to stay for 3 night. We ended up driving quite a bit as we're all about favorite spots but it was a great!
We left on a Friday at naptime, got lunch in Salem, dropped the kids' bikes at the bike shop and then drove down to Lincoln City to check into our place. After checking in we drove to Newport for dinner. Brandon has a sea food restaurant over there, Local Ocean, that he really loves and wanted to take me to. The food was delicious and the view was amazing. After dinner I couldn't resisting walking out to watch the sea lions. They really are some of the funniest creatures.
Saturday morning we got moving right away so that we could get out to Pacific City in time to explore the tide pools. It's been a long time since we've had the chance to do this and they were so much fun. The beauty of creation never ceases to amaze.
After exploring the tide pools we took a hike up and around the sand stone cliffs of the Cape Kiwanda State Natural Area. There were some absolutely breath taking views, it got us to the top of the great dune, and we got in some good walking/climbing.
Cape Kiwanda
Our plan was to have an early dinner but it was still much to early for that so we decided to take a drive and then ended up taking the truck out on the sand for a bit. We hadn't really prepared to hang out at the beach so we just laid in the back of the truck and enjoyed the ocean air.
Our original reason for coming to Pacific City was to try out the Pelican Brewery. It makes our favorite beer and we were excited to try it on tap. The food was good and the view was again amazing. Maybe I'm just a sucker for an ocean view :) but it was definitely worth the drive. This entire day was one of my favorites!!!
We spent our 2nd day shopping at the Lincoln City Outlets and then we drove up to Waldport to get Grand Central Pizza. This was a bit of a fiasco as the restaurant wasn't even open for dining due to COVID and by the time we got there we needed to use the restroom which also wasn't open. Anyway, despite the goofiness we figured it out and were able to eat at a picnic table outside and it was just fine.
The next morning we headed home to relieve Grammy from babysitting duty and to celebrated Payton's birthday!!!
