Given that we were running a little low on adventure juice, we decided to cram as much adventuring into our day today as possible.
The first adventure was trying to "get up and go." This means waking up, shoveling some breakfast, hitch trailer, drive. This usually doesn't work very well, as we tend to stumble somewhere between "get up" and "go." However, we were actually successful today. Mom was heroically fast at preparing breakfast, Remy was moderately quick in eating his breakfast (which for him is heroic), and Dad was uncannily speedy at getting the trailer prepped for leaving. What a team effort. We caught a nice sunrise somewhere in the middle of all that.
Our first stop was at the Bandon Coffee Cafe for caffeine. Dad had picked out a different roastery, but it turned out that they didn't actually sell any brewed coffee. Luckily Mom called ahead. BCC was in downtown Bandon, which looked like a very nice place to spend an afternoon. We weren't dawdling though and grabbed our cups and headed back to the truck. Dad gave the coffee a meh rating. The donut and cinnamon roll we got with the coffee were both excellent.
Our second stop was for a short hike at the Port Orford Heads State Park. There was a lifeboat museum (temporarily closed), and some interesting information about the lifeboat station that was previously manned out on the spit. We also got our first dose of seastack information. Seastacks are the big, often pointy, rocks that jut out just beyond the beach. The hike was quick but very pretty, with lots of views from high up on the bluff straight down into sheltered coves. You can occasionally see whales here but we didn't sight any. Remy pretended to be a horse the entire hike. We spent half an hour arguing about whether horses could talk to each other or if they just said "neigh." The argument is still unsettled.
Our third stop was at the Oregon Prehistoric Gardens. Remy and Dad were very excited for this. The gardens are a trip back through time to learn about different dinosaurs and plants that walked the earth millions of years ago (as opposed to the dinosaurs that were around less than millions of years ago). The entrance to the garden is guarded by an enormous T-rex and an even bigger Brachiosaurus. The price of admission was almost worth it just to stand next to these two enormous sculptures. Dad wasn't quite able to determine what the sculptures were made out of. They were exceptionally hard. The walk wound through a section of old growth forest with markers and new dinosaurs every couple of yards. Remy soaked up all of the information and was very excited to see some dinosaurs that he knew. The sculptures were all life sized so we got a very good sense for just how big some of the dinosaurs were. Fun fact, a brachiosaurs was thought to weigh around 28 tons. Redwood trees easily eclipses this quite often, clocking in at well over 100 tons. That's big.
Fourth stop was at Chetco brewing in Brookings. We sampled some beers and had nachos and an enchilada from the food truck inside the brewery. I don't know why one would want to put a food truck inside a brewery (as opposed to just building a kitchen), but it worked out well enough.
Back on the road again we drove for a while before our fifth stop, a quick jaunt on the sand out in the California sunshine. This was another quick stop as our primary objective was to get Emma some exercise. Emma chased a stick, Dad and Remy dug for treasure, all in all a big success. The sand was nice, the waves were crashing, and the temperatures were hovering around 60 degrees. We found some more signage about seastacks. KEEP THE ADVENTURES COMING.
The final stop for the day was at Trillium Falls for a 3 mile hike through the Redwoods. Redwood trees are really big. It is hard to look at them without getting a kink in your neck. The trail was an easy going loop, mostly uphill for the first half and mostly downhill for the second half. The online guide had listed it at 3 miles, but the sign in the park said 2.5. Based on how quickly we walked and how long it took we estimated that it was over 3. Remy hiked the whole time and only started to mention being/sore/tired/hungry during the last 10 minutes or so. He is developing into quite the hiker. We also stopped several times to admire interesting trees. In no particular orders we studied: very tall trees, very wide trees, very clustered trees, very burned trees, trees that looked very much like trolls, trees lacking a core, and trees growing on other trees. Dad supplemented all this tree studying by reciting the plot to the first half of the first book of Lord of the Rings for Remy. He found it highly enjoyable. Remy seemed to like it too.
The hike was right in the middle of elk country. There were signs everywhere for them, but we didn't see one until Dad spotted a lone buck through several groups of trees. If you squinted really hard you could just make out his antlers. Dad was exceptionally pleased with this animal spotting ability. Of course we then saw about a dozen more near the parking lot as we were leaving.
Everyone was very hungry after so much walking (and talking). We had pizza for dinner. Adventure juice levels are maxed out. Maybe too much adventure juice.
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