Tag Archives: Camp

Hanging Out a Yaquina Bay Light House!

Good evening!

Today is day 3 of our camping trip on the Oregon Coast, and we are having some serious fun!! 😉

This morning we got up and all got together for a breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes – I almost felt as if we were at IHOP!! LOL! 😉

Taelynn, Aaron, Jason, and Gavin

Aaron, Gavin, & Taelynn

After breakfast the kids headed over the the playground with Uncle Jay-Jay and Alice and I proceeded to head back into the tents, Alice, so she could ward off a tummy ache, and me to help calm my girls – too many kids, waaay too much attention!! HAHAHA! That is the price they pay for fame!! 😉

Alice, Paul, Gavin, Me, Taelynn, Jason, & Aaron

After accidentally falling asleep while reading, I awoke to find that everyone was gone!! DARN-IT!! I didn’t want to miss anything!! That is precisely when Jason walked up and we decided to take the girls for a walk and then get our Yahtzee on, I think we officially tied, which is a good thing bbecause neither one of us wants to hear about it the whole rest of the day!! *WINK!!!*

Aaron

Gavin

Taelynn

Finally Alice, and her brood got back from their trip to the candy store into town (WHOO! HOO!), and we got it together, took the girls for another quick walk, and then decided it was time to go get some serious picture taking, and playing done over at the Yaquina Head Light House!!

Jason dropped me off a ways up the road so that I could take pictures while I was walking down to where everyone else was waiting. Then We proceeded to walk down the 100 steps or so to get down to the waterfront. The beach there is a rocky one, which is a bit different for us than our average smooth sandy beached, but it was beautiful!! and muscle shells were plentiful, so the kids were happy to start collecting them!!!

What a GREAT day! I am have sun-kissed cheeks this evening, and everyone is happy, and having a great time playing games before dinner!!!

I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!!

Have a FABULOUS evening! 😉

Day Two Camping at the Oregon Coast!

Good evening!

We have had such a lovely day today. This morning, at about 4 in the morning, I am only guessing at the time seeing that we have no clocks or actual knowledge of time while we are out here, I hear a light pitter pat on the outside of our tent , and then it gets increasingly faster and faster until I realize what I am hearing, it is raining. I LOVE it!! It is not the oh-my-gosh-we-are-going-to-be-soaked kind of raining, but a nice light rain that just makes everything nice and damp when you wake up in the morning! It was very pleasant!

After dozing back to sleep, until the sun finally made an appearance, I got to do some nice quiet reading while my sweetie toodled around our campsite, setting up this, whittling that, and pretty much just have a good ol’ time!! After our respective quiet time activities, we decided to leash the girls up and take them for a walk around the camp grounds. That was fun, and the girls are getting better and better at being leashed, and not freaking out when strangers walk by! I can tell that they are having fun too!!

For lunch today, since Jason and I have had some trouble with our wood being too green to burn, we decided that we would head into Newport for some lunch, and we made it to the Chalet Restaurant. They have THE BEST fried chicken sandwich with sweet and sour sauce that is just DELICOUS!! My mom and I used to love sneaking away for some quality conversation together and we would go and partake in this delightful, but albeit sinful sandwich creation! I have been telling Jason about it for years, but this is the first time that he has ever had the opportunity to eat one, and his verdict is that, “it was excellent”. He can be a man of few words, but how right he is!

Ok, so back to the camping! Beverly Beach has some of the most intriguing trees I have ever seen. I am not sure what kind they are, buy their trunks are all gnarled, and mangle-ey! They look like something out of a Grimm’s Fairytale or something. They are quite breathe-takingly beautiful. I have live in Oregon for more than half of my life, and I have never seen anything quite like them before. That is what the majority of the pictures that I am sharing with you today are of!

Well, my sister, Alice and her family, all got here later this afternoon! I wasn’t sure they were going to make it, and I am like a worried mother-hen when they are on the road, I just want everyone to get here safely and soundly so we can start having fun together!!! It was so good to see everyone, and especially to see how big our nephews have gotten since last we’ve seen them, which was last Christmas!

We spent the evening playing at the park, roasting our hotdogs over the open flame, while the kids all kept playing musical chairs while trying to avoid the campfire smoke in their faces!! LOL! 😉 Then my sissy , Alice, and I ended up making a trip into town so that she could pick up some last minute, forgotten items for their campsite. Sounds familiar, I did the same thing yesterday – there must be something in our genes that make us similar that way!!!

Anyway, I am off to go have some more and s’more fun with my family – HAHAHAHA! Get it?? Ok, no worries! I have no plans to quit my day job!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉

A Blast From the Past!

Good evening!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers out there, or those Aunties, Sisters, Girlfriends, or Daughters who sometimes have an active mothering role to someone special in your life out there (that covers just about all of us, I think!!)!!! Today, my sweetie and I got to have a lovely visit and a great big ol’ lunch over at our mom, Linda’s place!! It was a bunch of fun!!

Happy Mother’s Day mom!!! 😉

Today, I wanted to share some of the pictures I took of Camp Kuratli up in Boring, Oregon yesterday. This is the Salvation Army camp that me and a lot of friends grew up going to every Summer. We had music camps, family camps, young adult/teen camps, and community camps. It seemed at times that we lived at camp almost all Summer long. One yea, I remember we made it home for EXACTLY 3 days all Summer, which gave us just enough time to wash all of our clothes!! I am not sure exactly how we were able to function without washing our clothes!! We must have smelled SOMETHING AWFUL!!! 😉

Here is what you see when you first get into camp. The main office is on the right, and the gymnasium, which I know we called something else, but I can’t seem to remember what is on the left of this pic.

Here is another pic of the large gymnasium! We hosted a lot of concerts here!

This is the old craft house and the stairs that all of us kids would race down to get to the shower house so we could get into the pool first during free time!!

Here is the caboose AKA Canteen (where we would wait in line to buy all sorts of candy and junk food!!)/Nurses Station – at least it was when we went there as kids. I don’t remember it quite looking so fresh, but we all sure had a fun time playing all over this thing!!! 😉

The camper cabins are all spaced out around this large loop. Here a few of those cabins.

You couldn’t really call being out at Camp Kuratli as roughing it because all of the cabins had indoor plumbing, running water, and space heaters! This place was really more like a resort for kids. 🙂 Here is some more of that loop of camper cabins!

Here is a pic of the other side of the circle, I am not sure what everything is now, but back in the day the building on the far left was the rec hall, which was where we could go during free time to play board games and stuff in case it was raining – although most of us spent EVERY free time in the pool – we figured we were already wet, so who cared if it rained??? The next building is the mess hall, and in front of that is the flag pole where we would line up every morning for revile, lowering whatever item of clothing happened to have gotten raided the night before (usually some poor camper’s underwear, of course!!), raising the American flag, saying the Pledge of Allegiance and then prayer for the meal. The next building was where the staff washed their laundry! I have no idea what that tiny building on the far left is, I don’t remember that, but it is right at the top of those stairs that you saw in the craft house pic. and a little farther to the right is where the caboose lives.

Here are a couple of pics of Merlo Field. This is up behind the circle of camper cabins, and this, for me, has changed the most dramatically since my days of going to this camp. This used to be a great open field!! Now it houses the camps swimming pools.

It sure is still beautiful though!! I know it is hard to tell, but up in this bit of forest is a very large house, and I remember whenever the campers would get really loud, the owners of the house would complain, and for some reason that made all of us campers laugh!! Like we were doing something right!! Even thinking about it now, still makes me smile! 😉

But mostly it was and is all of the lovely trees, the creek that runs through the camp, and the fact that we were right in the middle of the MOST BEAUTIFUL Oregon forest that helped make this camp special to all of us kids.

Here are a few panoramic views of the main circle, please feel free to click on these, or any of the pics to see them at full size – they are pretty large!!!

I hope you enjoyed these pics as much as I enjoyed taking them and reminiscing about this AMAZINGLY FUN time in my life!!

Have a FABULOUS evening!! 😉