The Road Barely Traveled!

Since we have already traveled the road less traveled, the road we traveled on Friday was definitely the road barely traveled.  It didn't start out that way.  We left the Casa de la Playa and starting making our way to the Portland area.  Our first stop was revisiting the Yaquina Head Lighthouse.  Even though the weather was better, it was hard to get a good picture because of all the people.  We were able to go inside today and walk all the way to the top.  There are some really cool views from the light room.

It was low tide when we got there and there were some good tide pools.  Our family didn't go down to the round rock beach again, but Stewart's did.  They said it was better then the touch areas at the aquarium.  So there you have it.  Don't waste your money.  Just go the the lighthouse at low tide!

After the lighthouse, we went to a place called Izzy's in Newport for lunch.  It is an all you can eat place where you can custom order parts of the meal.  The kids loooooved it.  I have never seen Jake and Corbin eat so much food.  And to top it off, I think they drained the ice cream machine.  They kept saying, "Can we come here again."

After lunch is when we head down the barely traveled road.  We were going to go see this 240 foot suspension foot bridge and waterfall called the Drift Creek Falls.  The road quickly turned from a two lane to a one lane.  It was heavily lined with trees.  But it was very neat looking.  We made it to the parking lot.  It was a 1 1/2 mile hike down the bridge and waterfall.  Then you had to hike up to get back to the cars.  It was a well groomed trail.  The trees and greenery was just beautiful.  My pictures don't give it justice.

The walk down was pretty easy. From the bridge we went down to the creek at the bottom and climb across the rocks to get a better view of the waterfall.  The boys thought it was awesome.  They were like little monkeys climbing all over.

 

On the way back up the trail, Wayne and I took Jake, Ellie and Corbin on what they called the North Loop.  I was a harder and longer trail.  Brian and Julie took Devin the easy way back.  Devin was not happy about hiking at all.  He did okay on the way down, but really hated walking back up.  At the very end of the trail, Devin completely refused to walk any more.  Brian is such a great dad!

After we finished our hike, we were all exhausted and decided it was time to get to our hotel.  We noticed a road sign that said the highway we wanted to take to Portland was only 8 more miles down the road and it would be much further to back track.  We decided to take the shorter distance.  This is when the road got a little primitive.  The road narrowed and became gravel for parts of it.  We were very fortunate that it was only 8 miles!  At the end of the road, we stumbled upon this great covered bridge.  When we pulled in, there was a man walking over to the bridge from his horse barn that was just to the right of the bridge.  He was a cowboy and he was walking around with his shirt off.  He had some music playing loudly and apparently was taking a break from shoeing his horses.  I felt like we had come across a scene from a romance novel!  So if you know anyone looking, for this kind of thing, I'll send you the directions!  (Lisa, if your reading, he was too old for you.)

We made it to the hotel safely and slept like rocks!