Not a Rock

Just to the right of the rock you've been seeing a lot of (blips passim) is a huge sand dune. We all climbed it this morning as a way of tiring the kids out in advance of a long car journey. The kids all skipped up it in pretty short order while we toiled up behind a little more sedately with more gasping and whinging than was probably necessary.

It is really, really, really high and really steep. The photo, as always doesn't really do justice to the gradient and height but just look at the tiny cars on the beach, and they are big American cars too.

We came here 5 years ago when our daughter was 2. I wanted to climb the dune but Mr MT cried off with some skiing injury or other so I ended up carrying a hefty 2 year old pretty much all the way up. I'm glad there was no Blip then - the beetroot faced self-portrait of me at the top was not a sight anyone else should have to see.

So on this trip the other grown ups had a hard time climbing, whereas I was skipping ahead of them just happy not to be laden down with offspring.

Anyway, enough of the reminiscing - nice view, though bit of a cloudy day.

The rest of the day was travelling north, along the quite amazing Oregon coast. We stopped at Cannon Beach for more views of sea stacks and a bizarre lunch. Actually, it was more us that was bizarre than the restaurant: we asked the waiter to box our left overs to take with us, but could he keep the beef separate from the chicken. I'm sure he thought we must have been from some bizarre 'don't let the beast of the field mix with fowl' cult, but actually it's just that our son is allergic to beef (and also fish, we think he's gearing up to be veggie).

Ended up the day with a night in Astoria, which is at the mouth of the unfeasibly large Columbia River.