To start with, Jesse and I spent a wonderful weekend at the coast for Valentine's Day. Two years and 2 days earlier, we drove up the coastal towns, spending the day doing unusual and fun things before he asked me to marry him at sunset at Seal Rock. So, in lieu of it being Valentine's Day weekend, 2 years after our engagement, because we haven't gone on a trip since our honeymoon, and because we won't be able to travel as much the more pregnant I get (and certainly after the baby is born), we made this our opportunity to get away.
I made reservations at Driftwood Shores, and after work on Friday, we packed and headed to the coast. We first went to our hotel and checked in. I knew the location would be fantastic, as I've been to Driftwood Shores before, but our room was a little disappointing. As soon as we sat our bags down, we realized that you could hear everything, word-for-word, that the people in the room next to us were saying. And it sounded like they had little kids with them. However, we made the best of the situation, and since we didn't get back until they were asleep, it seemed to work out okay.
After dropping off our bags, we headed to Three Rivers Casino. Neither of us had ever been to a casino before and thought it'd be fun. We didn't realize until we walked in the door that it was legal to smoke in the building (since smoking has been banned in public buildings all over the state). However, this is an Indian reservation's property, which makes them able to smoke. While not ideal, we made it through just fine. I just tried to avoid sitting next to someone who was puffing away, and we made use of the "non-smoking slot room" later. First, though, before we played any games, we wanted dinner! We were starving!
Our choices of dining in the casino were an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet (not my cup o' tea), a cafe, and a steakhouse. We opted for the final option. Steak sounded fabulous! This place was probably the fanciest place we'd ever been to, though. Prime rib and lobster for 2 was $99!!! We each got a steak, about $30 a piece, and a salad (another $5-6 each). And since we ordered soda instead of wine, the waitress brought us our Mountain Dew in the biggest wine glasses I'd ever seen. Our food was really good and it was a nice experience. My pictures didn't turn out too great because I didn't want to use my flash in the restaurant.
After our bellies were filled, we were off to the slot machines. I have to admit, gambling is much harder than I ever realized. I'm a smart kid, I think. I graduated top of my class in both high school and college, but I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to play these slot machines. It, first of all, took me awhile to realize that some machines had buttons that you pushed AND a touch-screen that you could push. On top of that, even though some had a lever that you could pull on the side, you could also push a button in front of you which would do the same thing. More confusing than that, though, was that you could select lines to bet on. So, as the wheels turned and the little icons flashed before you, you could not only bet on the middle one, but also on any combination of icons you wanted. The more lines you bet on, the more chances you had of winning, but the more money it took out of the amount you had. And, when you bet on these lines, you were betting on the next spin. There's no strategy, as far as I can tell, other than playing smart enough to not bet all of your money on one spin. We did fairly well, though. We only spent $20 in the whole casino and we made $8.27 back of it! It wasn't really the experience we thought it would be, but it was fun to try something we had never done.
After sleeping in the next morning, and waking up to a beautiful oceanview,
we drove up to Sea Lion Caves.
I We have been to this place many times over the years, but I had never actually paid to go down into the cave and see the sea lions there. Jesse had done it only once, I think, as a little kid. So we paid our $11 each to go down there. There were 250 sea lions in the cave, and you could smell every single one of them! Surprisingly, though, I think the smell bothered Jesse more than me. The disappointing part of it was that you had to stand a distance up from them and peer at them through a chain-link fence. Both Jesse and I were under the impression that it was more open, although I knew that you wouldn't be close enough to touch them as that could be dangerous. You also couldn't use flash photography, so my pictures were pretty dark. Aside from watching the sea lions sitting there barking at each other, there were a few museum-esque exhibits. One showed a sea lions bones, as they lay on the ground, in the same place they did 200 some-odd years ago. And, another showed the skeletal system of a female sea lion, which was really weird looking.
There was also a video you could watch, some historical facts about the cave's discovery you could read, and a look-out to view Haceta Head Lighthouse. It would not be worth the $22 to go down there again, but we were glad we experienced it.
We took these pictures outside of the caves. When we were dating 4 years ago, we took pictures at this same lookout point. So, I wanted one of us now. In mine, you can hopefully see where my belly is beginning to pooch a little bit (12 weeks pregnant).
After that, I wanted to get as close as I possibly could to Haceta Head Lighthouse. It's standard practice to get a picture of the lighthouse over-looking the ocean EVERY time you go to the coast, but I had never been any closer to it. So, we drove up the road to a sign that pointed ahead to the lighthouse.
After dropping off our bags, we headed to Three Rivers Casino. Neither of us had ever been to a casino before and thought it'd be fun. We didn't realize until we walked in the door that it was legal to smoke in the building (since smoking has been banned in public buildings all over the state). However, this is an Indian reservation's property, which makes them able to smoke. While not ideal, we made it through just fine. I just tried to avoid sitting next to someone who was puffing away, and we made use of the "non-smoking slot room" later. First, though, before we played any games, we wanted dinner! We were starving!
Our choices of dining in the casino were an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet (not my cup o' tea), a cafe, and a steakhouse. We opted for the final option. Steak sounded fabulous! This place was probably the fanciest place we'd ever been to, though. Prime rib and lobster for 2 was $99!!! We each got a steak, about $30 a piece, and a salad (another $5-6 each). And since we ordered soda instead of wine, the waitress brought us our Mountain Dew in the biggest wine glasses I'd ever seen. Our food was really good and it was a nice experience. My pictures didn't turn out too great because I didn't want to use my flash in the restaurant.
After our bellies were filled, we were off to the slot machines. I have to admit, gambling is much harder than I ever realized. I'm a smart kid, I think. I graduated top of my class in both high school and college, but I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to play these slot machines. It, first of all, took me awhile to realize that some machines had buttons that you pushed AND a touch-screen that you could push. On top of that, even though some had a lever that you could pull on the side, you could also push a button in front of you which would do the same thing. More confusing than that, though, was that you could select lines to bet on. So, as the wheels turned and the little icons flashed before you, you could not only bet on the middle one, but also on any combination of icons you wanted. The more lines you bet on, the more chances you had of winning, but the more money it took out of the amount you had. And, when you bet on these lines, you were betting on the next spin. There's no strategy, as far as I can tell, other than playing smart enough to not bet all of your money on one spin. We did fairly well, though. We only spent $20 in the whole casino and we made $8.27 back of it! It wasn't really the experience we thought it would be, but it was fun to try something we had never done.
After sleeping in the next morning, and waking up to a beautiful oceanview,
we drove up to Sea Lion Caves.
I We have been to this place many times over the years, but I had never actually paid to go down into the cave and see the sea lions there. Jesse had done it only once, I think, as a little kid. So we paid our $11 each to go down there. There were 250 sea lions in the cave, and you could smell every single one of them! Surprisingly, though, I think the smell bothered Jesse more than me. The disappointing part of it was that you had to stand a distance up from them and peer at them through a chain-link fence. Both Jesse and I were under the impression that it was more open, although I knew that you wouldn't be close enough to touch them as that could be dangerous. You also couldn't use flash photography, so my pictures were pretty dark. Aside from watching the sea lions sitting there barking at each other, there were a few museum-esque exhibits. One showed a sea lions bones, as they lay on the ground, in the same place they did 200 some-odd years ago. And, another showed the skeletal system of a female sea lion, which was really weird looking.
There was also a video you could watch, some historical facts about the cave's discovery you could read, and a look-out to view Haceta Head Lighthouse. It would not be worth the $22 to go down there again, but we were glad we experienced it.
We took these pictures outside of the caves. When we were dating 4 years ago, we took pictures at this same lookout point. So, I wanted one of us now. In mine, you can hopefully see where my belly is beginning to pooch a little bit (12 weeks pregnant).
After that, I wanted to get as close as I possibly could to Haceta Head Lighthouse. It's standard practice to get a picture of the lighthouse over-looking the ocean EVERY time you go to the coast, but I had never been any closer to it. So, we drove up the road to a sign that pointed ahead to the lighthouse.
We had no idea how deceiving that sign really was. This sign o' lies was pointing in a very vague direction towards two streets, one that headed down and one that headed up. So, we drove down first and found ourselves on the beach. There were other signs that indicated tours of the lighthouse from this area, but they didn't begin until mid-March. Furthermore, to get to the lighthouse from this point, you would have to hike quite a ways- not easy for me in my pregnancy-fatigue. So we drove back up and decided to follow the other road which pointed up. As we drove, this road became a never-ending one. We joked about it leading straight to someone's private house, making this the world's longest driveway. We joked about it leading to the edge of a cliff with a sign that said "Ha Ha! Sucker!" We joked that there should be signs all along the way telling you if this really was the right road or not. Unfortunately, no such signs existed. The road continued to wind up the moutainside, and since we could still see the oceanside and knew we were heading in the general vacinity of where the lighthouse should be, we kept going. Since we could only travel about 20 miles an hour around this windy road, it was slow-going, but before long we reached the point of no return. Our curiosity got the best of us and we couldn't stop without seeing where this road went to. If we went this far, we HAD to keep going.
As we drove, we began to see patches of snow.
That was odd to me. I had never seen snow at the coast before. Then the patches of snow (or the inbetween lack of) became fewer and fewer. Soon, we were fish-tailing our way through car tracks in inches of snow. This began to freak me out a little bit. I realized that we were a long ways up there, I had no phone service at all, and we had only seen one car the whole time we were on this road (just leaving as we were getting on). If we were to crash, no one would know where we were. We drove on, though, determined to keep going, and then we hit our dead end. The road T'd off with a sign saying that there was one freeway to the left and one freeway to the right. The one to the right was the one we had previously been on, only 13 miles away, but stopping us dead in our tracks was 3 inches of untouched snow. Considering that we had already been sliding all around on this narrow road in the places where cars had previously driven, I was more than leery of continuing to drive on fresh snowy roads, especially without chains of any kind. So, we attempted to turn around. Jesse backed the truck off the side of the road to make his turn-around, only to find that we were immediately stuck. The tire kept spinning out. I was thoroughly freaked out at this point. Jesse remained calm saying that he could get us out of it, but admitted later that he was freaked out too. And then the snow began to fall, hard and fast! Since we couldn't go forward, Jesse backed us out of the rut, driving alongside the edge of the woods until we were able to get safely back on the road, now heading in the opposite direction. Disappointed that we never found the lighthouse, but laughing at our adventure, we headed back the way we had come. The whole trip took around 45 minutes, due to the slow-driving conditions. And now, having said all of that, don't follow the sign that says ---> to Haceta Head Lighthouse. It's a big fat liar!
Now back on our original path, we headed north to Cape Perpetua and went to their visitor lookout center where we could see the ocean. They also had the giant jaw bones of a blue whale on site. Crazy big!
From there, we drove to Waldport and had lunch at Subway and then (for the climax of the trip) we drove to Seal Rock where we got engaged 2 years earlier.
The only times it ever rained were when we were driving. Any time we got out of the car, though, the skies were bright and sunny. We made our way down to the beach and found a spot nearby where Jesse had proposed.
(The view from where he proposed to me)
We sat and looked out at the ocean, with our arms around each other, and discussed how thankful we were for our lives thus far. We had no clue 2 years ago that we would be more than happily married, be home-owners, have great jobs, and be pregnant with our first baby at this time. We sat on the beach 2 years earlier in extreme excitement about everything we hoped to achieve together, but where we are now is far greater than anything we ever imagined. After we got engaged that day, we prayed together, dedicating our marriage and wedding-planning to God, asking for wisdom to love each other as He wants us to, and praying that our love be a testimony of God's love to all who witness it. Now, 2 years later, we again prayed, thanking God for bringing us this far, praising Him for what He has given to us at this moment, and asking His continued blessing on our future.
To finish the day, we drove back to Florence (where we had started from) and got ice cream in the downtown district before heading back home. A wonderful weekend!
Oh, and I got one souvenir before we left...
I collect these Willow Tree figurines that I think are beautiful. Each original piece is hand-carved by the artist, and these figurines are so expressive in their relationships with each other, despite the fact that no figurine actually has a face carved into it. I got one figurine when Jesse and I got married. It is called "Together" and says, "For those who have found their true partner in love and life."
On Christmas this year, just 2 weeks after finding out I was pregnant, I received another as a gift called "Cherish" which says, "Awaiting a miracle."
At the end of this trip, I found this figurine in a gift shop which seemed to befit this occassion perfectly: "Promise" saying, "Hold dear the promise of love."
1 comment:
well it sounds like things are going great for you guys. I hope the baby is doing well and mama is moving along well with all the sickness and stuff like that. sounds like you had a wonderful valentines. you will have to let us know what you are having when you find out if you do... :)
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