Goodbye Oregon

Alas, the journey is quickly coming to an end. I am not sure there is any better way to say goodbye to my home state than by doing something I've always wanted to do: go hunting for a float on the beach. This on top of being able to see my niece one more time and taking a quick drive to Vancouver, Washington made this trip one I will not soon forget. As I write this paragraph, I sit in the airport staring at the iconic PDX carpet chuckling at how many people I know have taken pictures of this carpet. Now it is my turn!

Yesterday Robert, my parents and I took a trip to Lincoln City, Oregon for an event where you look for glass floats. The point is to look for these glass floats that local artists hide above the tide line on the beach. These floats can be hidden along drift wood, in grass, under piles of seaweed...in essence it is like going on a wild easter egg hunt! Glass floats were used by fishermen to keep their fishing nets floating. While I am not sure they are used often any more, they have always been fun to look at while going into glass blowing galleries.

We did not find any glass floats. I did find some plastic ones! I found it interesting how although my main focus was to look for glass floats, I also became aware of how much trash was on the beach. A part of me wonders whether it might be a cool tourism thing to also make this time a beach clean up. Maybe that will be for some other part of the year so people can find excuses to come to the coast.

I was convinced there was a float under a crevice!

As a side note, to those who do not know, the phrases of "going to the coast" and "going to the beach" can have different meanings to Oregonians. Going to the beach literally means that you go to the beach like we did. However, because Oregon's coast is very rocky and beaches do not always exist, if you go to some coastal towns without going to the beach, you may say that you went to the coast.

It seemed like there were a lot of people in search of the floats. I am not sure how they fared after we walked passed each other, but a small competative part of me was happy they did not seem to find anything in this area. I spent about 10 minutes combing over those rocks not too long after they showed up. On the plus side, it seemed like everyone that was there seemed to have fun.

The weather particularly cold to me with the highs being in the 40s. I really wanted to explore these tide pools but the waves seemed high. They were great to admire from a distance. The ocean is so beautiful here and so different than the Pacific in Panama. 

After trying two beaches with no luck we decided to go into a gallery where they blow glass. Robert and I decided to make our own float. Glass blowing is enjoyable and it was fun to create our own unique float. It takes 18 hours to cool and unfortunately we had to get it mailed to us since Robert and I were not able to be around to pick it up.

This morning we woke up and drove to Vancouver, Washington to see my aunt. This morning was cold. It was wonderful to see her along with other family members who live with her.

We had a relatively uneventful flight back to Phoenix and landed to a beautiful sunset. The picture does not do justice to the read glowing horizon. Coming home was wonderful as we got greeted by our two dogs. I missed them and look forward to when we can all go to Panama together.