Wednesday, July 27, 2005

LIFE: Day at the beach


So I had a day off yesterday and we took the boy to the beach to get some cool air in before 90-degree temperatures return later this week. It's nice living just an hour to 90 minutes away from the ocean, although for those of you who live in more southerly climes Oregon beaches can be a bit of a shock.

Usually you can take the inland temperature and subtract 20 degrees from it, but if you're actually on the beach, howling winds can sometimes make it feel like midwinter even in July. I love wind myself, but few other people do, and you can always tell the tourists (i.e. Californians) by who you see wearing tank tops and shivering on an Oregon beach.

Anyway, we spent the day at the Oregon Dunes, which is one of Oregon's unique places — a 40-mile long stretch of sand dunes right out of the Sahara desert, but tucked up along an ocean coast in between the sea and green low forests. They're real popular with loud ATV-riding folk, but fortunately big stretches of it are marked off as vehicle-free so you can enjoy them in peace and quiet, which is where we took Baby Peter yesterday. He loved it, the biggest sandbox he's ever seen:
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It's a cool place -- you step out a few hundred feet onto the dunes and suddenly you're Lawrence of Arabia, nothing but blank sand stretching away on either side of you.
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Peter loved tossing sand in the air and repeatedly running and falling down, at one point making "sand angels" as he lay flat. Of course, like most things for a 17-month-old, the novelty wore off fast and he got a little freaked out, but it was fun while it lasted...

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