Living the Coastal Life
We are cornered in by smoke!! The coast of Oregon is the only place without it, so that’s where we’ve been hanging. Not too shabby of a place to be! It’s been a great couple of weeks - we even hosted our first visitor!
At the beginning of last week, Ben had his fellowship conference where they played his recorded talk and he answered questions. It went really well, a lot of participation and questions from the crowd. He was still pretty bummed it wasn’t in person though. We hung out in this parking lot with good service. There was a trail down to a very secluded beach.
The coast is filled with amazing lookouts and cute beach towns. On Wednesday, we bought salmon off of a fishing boat and momentarily thought we were bamboozled - it was $28 per pound! But we checked a few other places and apparently that’s right on par for fresh salmon filets around here. Next time we’ll be getting a cheaper fish haha.
That night, we stumbled upon the most beautiful sunset.
Before we knew it, it was Friday and time to pick up our friend Sam! He works in the lab with Ben at Georgia Tech. We had such a fun time with him. He really got the true “van experience” with exaggerated ups and downs though. We had a couple awesome days, and the last day we were all plagued with food poisoning! We think it was the meat for our carne asada tacos.
Sam is into filming, so he helped me vlog the whole weekend. There is a ton of footage so it will likely take me awhile to edit, but a vlog is in the works! Most of the pictures are on his phone too, so I don’t have much to share right now, but I’ll add to this post eventually so you can see more of Sam’s beautiful face.
One of the coolest parts of the coast has been the wildlife! We’re using our binoculars multiple times throughout the day to check out the pelicans and the cormorants aka the “loons of the sea.” When it’s low tide, you can walk out to the rocks to check out the tide pools. Ben is head over heels excited about all the new species he’s finding and adding to his “Seek” App.
There’s a lot of other van lifers around here too and a common spot to sleep is just in these pull-offs in National Forest land. It makes for a great breakfast view!
We decided to go up into the woods for a few days this week though. This spot was great to just buckle down and get some work done. It was chilly so I made some hot soup.
The past 2 days we’ve spent at this lookout in the town of Yachats and I mean COME ON! It’s just gorgeous. It’s been warm enough to keep the doors open so we can feel the ocean air and sunshine all day. Public restrooms too, so that’s a bonus!
So needless to say, the coast has been great to us!! Now it’s time to move on…
