Jaime was able to get Friday off, so we left town early Friday morning. We took the scenic route through Astoria and down highway 101 so that we could stop in Tillamook at the Cheese Factory! We took a quick tour and then bought some YUMMY cheese curds (squeeky cheese), chocolate milk, and peperoni sticks before we continued down the coast.
We finally arrived at our hotel and couldn't wait to get checked in to see the view from our room. IT WAS AMAZING!!! Check it out!
The resort has a beautiful (mostly private) beach down below so we threw our stuff down and headed down to the beach. It was low tide so we played around in the tide pools for a while.
That is our hotel in the background up on the cliff.
I'm not sure what Jaime is doing in this picture. But we were playing around on this cliff.
The next day, we slept in of course and then pack up some goodies and headed down to play on the beach some more. Jaime wandered around playing on the rocks while I laid out in the sun and read. You can see him in this picture at the top of the big rock he climbed.
I was sick all weekend, so I was all about laying around and resting in the 70 degree sunshine.
After a while, Jaime got bored running around the beach so we decided to head into town, Depoe Bay, OR. While we were driving through, I was reminded a lot of the spring break trips I took with my family down there and I remember one trip in particular where we went whale watching. I figured it was too late in the season to do it in late September. But it was just our luck...they had one more boat going out at 3:30pm!! We made it just in time! We gave them the money and headed down to the marina and got on the boat. The boat captain promised us they had been seeing whales all day! It was very warm out so it felt good to get out on the ocean and feel the cool breeze. Right as we got out to sea, we came up to a buoy and saw that a big old sea lion had someone climbed up on top of it and was basking in the sun.
It was quite the site. We did see quite a few whales, but I didn't take any pictures because I didn't want to risk dropping my camera in the ocean. Plus the pictures wouldn't have turned out very well. But it was amazing seeing these huge creatures come out of the water. I was very impressed. Once the whales slowed down, we headed into a bay called "Whale's Bay". It was so beautiful in there. One of the prettiest beaches on the Oregon Coast, and since it was low tide, there was TONS of harbor seals laying all over the exposed rocks in the sun.
Once we watched the sea lions for a while, it was time to head back towards Depoe Bay. On the way back, the captain opened the boat to full throttle and we hauled along the ocean. I couldn't believe such a boat could go so fast! The water was spraying up all over everyone and I suddenly regretted wearing shorts. Plus the afternoon cool breeze had picked up so my legs and feet quickly became numb. But it was so fun I didn't really mind. I was glad to be back to shore but bummed that our whale watching adventure was over. Well worth the $18/each.
We headed back to our hotel and got there just in time to run down to the beach to watch the sunset. It was so beautiful I just couldn't stop taking pictures. I hope everyone gets to see a sunset like that at least once in their life. These pictures just don't do it justice.
We headed back up to our room and decided to go to the restaurant in our hotel. It was a very nice restaurant but the food was surprisingly lame. At least the burgers were. Maybe their seafood was alright, but neither of us were in the mood for it. Here are some pictures we took from our balcony before heading off to dinner.
Sunday morning came and we were pretty bummed that it was time to head home. But at the same time, I was glad to get home and see my kitties who I'd missed so much! We slept in and had a late check out and then headed back up north. We stopped in Lincoln City at a very pretty beach and said goodbye to the ocean till next time. 
Since we were driving through the Portland area, we decided we would stop at the Sonic Drive In in Hillsbaro, Oregon. It was about 1/2 hour out of the way, but well worth it. THEY NEED TO HURRY UP AND BUILD ONE HERE!
Anyways, once we got up to Longivew, WA Jaime got a little cramped so we pulled over at a rest stop. We both got out, stretched out legs and as when headed back to the car, I realized Jaime left the lights on. But that was the least of our problems. It told him he left them on and he patted his pockets to find his keys and guess what........he didn't have them!! We looked in the car, and there they were. Right in the ignition. We were both a little panicked but Jaime went around and started asking people if they had a coat hanger. He kept striking out, so he moved over to the motor homes. First person he asked there had one!! As he started getting to work on the hanger, a very nice man noticed we were in distress and put his trip on hold to help us out. While Jaime and this nice man worked and worked on the car, I noticed a police cruiser pull up. I thought I'd go ask them for a slim jim, but decided against it since the guys were already doing what a slim jim would do. After a while, the cops got back in their car and drove RIGHT PAST US, staring at us, knowing full well we were locked out of our car and needed help. "Protect and SERVE"....my butt!! What a bunch of losers.
Jaime and the very nice man finally got the doors unlocked after about 40 minutes. We tried to pay the guy but he said "HELL NO" when we pulled out cash to give him. I wish there were more people like him in the world.
Usually this wouldn’t have scared us that much, but since it was “Labor Day Weekend”, we knew that there was a high probability of Forest Rangers coming around and messing with us. So to avoid an unnecessary fine, we decided to keep hunting. As we turned around in the tight trail, we added a pretty good sized dent to the truck... Oops. Good thing we’re selling it soon. We were running out a daylight real fast so luckily the next site we found was perfect, away from the roads and right next to a big creek. We wasted no time setting up camp and getting a fire going. Once it got dark, we realized we had NO firewood. So the three of us piled in the truck (which only has 2 bucket seats, so I was crammed in-between the boys) and headed up the mountain with the chainsaw to get some good firewood. We didn’t have to go far, but we did anyways cause it was a lot of fun driving around in the pitch black with all the millions of bright stars and startled elk along the roads. Even after we got enough wood, we were having so much fun driving around we just kept going up and up the mountains until the road just came to an end at about 5000 feet. But oh no, Jaime still wasn’t done. He insisted on doing some “real 4x4ing.” So we found a good muddy 4x4 trail and started up it. It was VERY slippery and I started to get pretty scared that we could get stuck. It was about 12:30am and we had NO cell phone service and were about 7 miles from our campsite, and 15 miles from any services. Surprisingly, we only had one scare and Kevin and Jaime were able to maneuver the truck perfectly to keep us from sliding down a steep ravine.
I could not believe it. Snow in August? Once it started snowing, we still had a good 30-45 minutes of riding to get to the top. Finally we made it to the top of Ravens Roost! (6100 Ft)
It was so cold and so windy, we could hardly see anything. Ice chunks were blowing off the radio towers and the snow was blowing horizontal. We parked our bikes and huddled next to the radio tower buildings to block some of the wind until the harsh weather passed. After a while it stopped and visibility was much better and we were able to take some pictures and even got brief cell phone service. 
On the way back down, the weather got very bad again. We had to stop every mile or so just to warm our numb hands on our exhaust pipes. I half expected to take my gloves off and see frost bitten black fingers. But luckily that wasn’t the case. When we got back down to camp, I wasted no time getting a fire started. Once I got it blazing and starts to feel my fingers again, an unfamiliar car pulled into our campsite. Much to my surprise, it was Aaron, Brent, Andra, Dad, and Dustin. They’d come to hang out with us for a few hours and brought a much appreciated bucket of cheese puffs.
We hiked around our campsite for a while and found some amazing trees that had been chewed by huge beavers. 
Lots of the trees had fallen down over the creek, but some were left half chewed and looked like they could fall with a good hard push or gust of wind. We shot some guns, ate food, rode the bikes around the campsite, and talked around the campfire for a few hours and then they headed back towards civilization. That night we crashed pretty early because we were all pretty exhausted from the intimidating ride.
This is the first time all 7 Hinckley’s have been all together since probably 2005. So it was very nice to all be together. We snapped a few quick pictures before everyone went off to bed.
It was hard hiking because it has been so long since I’d been on a real hike AND my body was still very sore from riding on Saturday. But we finally got there and it was cooler than I expected. Miles of white trees burned decades ago and are still standing. We hung out for a while and watched some chipmunks and enjoyed pretty views. We even ran into some “thru hikers” who were in the middle of their hike from Mexico to Canada! Those people are crazy!!! The ones we ran into had been hiking since April 1st! That’s a whole lot of hiking. After our hike, we came back to my parent’s for a nice Labor Day BBQ and some more family pictures. 
This weekend went by way too fast. Sometimes I wish life was a never-ending weekend.