We have never lived in a small town. Nor have we lived in a farming community. We found our rural environment exciting…for about 5 weeks. With 8 weeks left to be hosts in our beautiful campground in Bay City, we were quite challenged to find stimulation, especially after an injury benched Steven from daily tennis. We solved this by weekly trips to Portland for ethnic food, weekly women’s tennis for Sally in Portland and Vancouver, WA across the Columbia River, and wonderful visits from our Portland pals! The gals at City Hall (our bosses, too) kept us laughing.

We also started to go further away from our campground to sample fun coastal activities like…

…climbing the enormous sand dune in Pacific City (far steeper than it looks at the bottom…note people crawling up, a necessity in the areas where the steep surface is all blown sand, so fine, it is one step up, 4 steps slide back)…

…sharing the beach on a 7.2 mi walk with the Percherons on Bay Ocean Spit, sandwiched between Tillamook Bay and the Pacific Ocean…

…hanging with the “girls” in the milking barn at the biggest and best County Fair in Oregon…

…enjoying the owls living in the biggest existing wooden hanger in the world, used for blimps in WWII. There were no successful submarine attacks on Allied ships off the West Coast due to these behemoths used as spotters…

…encouraging the Rail Riders with high fives (a great use of decommissioned timber rail lines)…

…climbing Neahkahnie Mountain for a fine vista of shifting fog and wave patterns…

…visits with Angie’s calm and sweet lab puppies…

…tidepool rambling…

…shopping for the most beautiful fruit and produce (and marionberry jam!)…

…and sunsets and campfires because, it’s Summer, and the evenings are long and mild. Yet, we were antsy, sometimes bored (Sally read three Harry Potter books in Spanish and conjugated Spanish verbs for entertainment!) and needed our pals’ visits like oxygen for the brain. Next summer, we are coming back for five weeks at the end of Summer. Please visit! We need you!