Friday July 14 & Saturday July 15 (Port Orchard & Long Beach to Garibaldi)

Friday

Another glorious day today with hardly a breathe of air. A breeze did get up later in the afternoon but it remained very pleasant throughout the day.

I did my ironing after breakfast and then sorted my gear to be packed for the weekend trip. Cheryl went out to get her hair done and Jim was working on the section.

I sat outside for a while and later, after Cheryl  had arrived back home, we went to the shops fir a few provisions, including water for myself. I grabbed a coffee from Starbucks on the way home. 

We went out for dinner, at the place I had earlier asked Cheryl about, when she responded 'that one place', I did not realise that was the name of the restaurant, lol! I had the pot roast and could not finish it, talk about a large serving!

After dinner we went down to the water near the marina and watched the sunset change from a beautiful gold to a stunning pink! In the panoramic shot it looks as if we are about to go down the gurgler, lol, we were quite safe!

Saturday

Today we were off to see the Sand Castles at Long Beach and then travel further south into Oregon ending up at Garibaldi just north of Tillamook. It was again a another lovely day at home although we did travel through some cloud in the hills nearer the coast and drove through a couple of patches of light drizzle.

Cheryl and Jim went out just before 9 am to pick up the rental car that they hired for the weekend. It is a Chevy Cruise Premier very dark navy in colour. We eventually hit the road at 11 am and made our way through the back roads to Long Beach. We had a couple of rest stops and arrived about 3 pm.

We walked along the track down to the beach to view the sand castles, the competition had just been judged. I thought there would be many more than there were, not sure why I thought this, lol! 

There were some interesting sculptures and four different classes from Master to Intermediate to Novice and Family. 

I thought the Gargoyles looked good but with no idea of what class a sculpture was entered into it made it very difficult to judge.

I wandered back to the car and it took me the best part of ten minutes to clean the sand from my feet and sandals. 

We then drove back towards the township and found the Corral where we had been told that the burgers were very good. I had a FISHWICH, it had three pieces of cod plus lettuce etc  in a burger bun, it was good!

We then headed off to drive to Garibaldi on the coast a few miles north of Tillamook. We crossed the Astoria Bridge which took us into Oregon. The far end of the bridge is higher to let ships pass underneath. There were seven or eight ships parked up further back from the bridge, I have no idea why!!

Unfortunately, tomorrow night's motel was in the GPS unit so we took a wrong turn and ended up driving through a forest instead of down the coast road. I should have been more alert and requested a turn back as soon as it had happened. We drove through miles of pine forest, mostly grown for cash!

Finally, we reached Garibaldi, basically a fishing village with add ons, it is rather cute. 

After finding our rooms and bringing our gear in from the car we went out for a walk to try and catch the end of the sunset, it was a gorgeous evening! 

With all of the pine trees being gown it was not surprising to see a large saw mill down by the port while on our walk. I then went back to my room to shower and get some sleep.