Coastal Oregon is INCREDIBLY beautiful!  The beaches are wide, the sand is so soft and deep, some shorelines separated from the road only by dunes, some by rocky cliffs, but all spectacular.

Just beautiful!

We spent the night in Pacific City, OR with HCCA members Jeannette and Ladd Henderson.  They live right on the coast, overlooking this spit of land.  They have quite a few antique vehicles, some in museums in another part of the state and some still in boxes that need to be restored.  

The question among all old car people is, "Will I ever live long enough to restore all my old cars"?  Every old car deserves love - even if it is in dozens of pieces, all rusty and greasy and it currently lives in the corner of the garage under an old tarp.  I didn't mean that Ladd had an old car under a tarp in the corner of the garage, but we all know that there are a lot of cars that fall under this stage of "restoration".

Ladd and Jeannette were great hosts and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them.  They love to travel, most of it overseas, and hearing about their adventures was a treat.  Jeannette is a marvelous cook (Joe certainly didn't marry me for my cooking abilities)! 

The spit of land in the picture above is incredibly beautiful.  Can it get much better than this?  Oh, yes. The spit of land is the view outside their dining room window while the huge rock below is right outside their living room window.  Look to the right side of this huge hunk of rock and notice the eye of the needle!

  
Amazing!  Ladd said that in the spring and early fall pods of whales pass between this rock and the shore on their migrations north and south.  What an amazing place to live.  Deer come into their yard quite often, some pretty tame.  As we were driving up their road, we saw a mother deer and 2 fawns. There is an area downtown Pacific City near the Pizza place that has lots of resident bunnies that hang around.   Apparently, the neighbors in the area used to feed them shredded carrots so, being smart bunnies, they stayed and do what bunnies do, and multiplied. Joe and I saw 2 - a quite ordinary looking domestic bunny and another that was pure black - both just hanging out downtown.   

Rugged shoreline south of Pacific City.

Rugged shoreline and sandy beaches.  Just spectacular scenery!!

There  always has to be a "quirky" picture, so here is today's "Quirk".

I spotted this VW bug/camper conversion at a Tillamook, OR RV center.  Some people just think a little "off-center".  I love it!

Tonight and tomorrow night, we are spending the night in Florence, OR, still along the coast.  We went to a Fred Meyer's store (like a Walmart) this afternoon in Florence and it was backed right up to a sand dune with the beach just on the other side.  I noticed a vehicle with a loader on the front - I think they use it to push sand, not snow.

The coast is beautiful, but the traffic has been horrendous.  We pull off often to let traffic go by and have the hardest time getting back on the road.  There may be 20 cars going by before there is a break in traffic.  It was really busy over the weekend but we had hoped that being a Monday, the traffic would be somewhat less.  Keep dreaming!  The beach draws the crowds here in the summer no matter what day of the week it is.