Another overload of blog stuff

I'm back for another lengthy post.  (A late, lengthy post, that is.)  This one also has to do with my trip to the beach, but these are pictures of the Newport Aquarium.  I unfortunately didn't get any good pictures of the seals or any of those die-of-cuteness-overload worthy animals, but I did get some pretty good pictures of other fascinating creatures that they have there.

Here we have the octopus.  It was surprisingly very active.  Well, I suppose I don't know if that's a surprising thing or not, but to me it was because I'm used to seeing animals at the zoo that are completely stationary.  So seeing this guy writhe around his home was quite fun.

And here, we have the....erm.....the octopus.  The same one.

Okay, last one of the octopus.  I was going to put them in a collage like I did in my last post, but......laziness got a hold of me.

A pair of pouty puffins.

I love how much the tanks look like the ocean with the sun rays streaming in.  It's gorgeous.

 Why do fish always look so forlorn? 

 I like taking pictures of people taking pictures of things.  (That would be my sister in the picture.)

 See?  Here we are again.  Kids, don't make this face or else you'll end up like these guys, and will have a frown on your face for the rest of eternity.  You know how your parents always tell you, "If you keep making that face, it's gonna stay like that."?  Well, I suggest you listen to them.

This is about the only none-blurry picture I got of the sharks.  They had things to do, places to be, and they had no intention of stopping to smile at the cameras.

This is a Japanese Spider Crab.  They can grow up to be 4 meters (about 13 feet) long.  This one was just a young'un, though, and he was relatively small.  They had a mural on the wall next to its tank of a full-size one that showed how big they can get.  It gave me the heebie-jeebies.  One more reason I do not want to go in the ocean anywhere.

Such an adorable itty bitty squid!  He was in the Japanese Spider Crab's tank for some reason.  Hopefully not for food, though.  He was too cute for food.  And he just sat there.  Looking cute.

I took about 50 pictures of this fish, and this one was really the only one that came out clear for the most part.  He would not stand still.  Or swim still.  Or float still.  Or whatever fish do when they aren't moving.  Anyway, I like him because of how orange he was.  He stood out from everything else in his tank.

And we can't forget the jellyfish.  They're just too cool to forget.

And more jellyfish!  Yes, their tank is really that blue.  I'm not sure why, but it looks cool.  Maybe that's the only reason they needed.  Coolness. 

Random little fish that needed a picture.

Whenever I see urchins, I think of Freddi Fish.  You know, that video game that you used to play when you were little?  With that yellow and orange fish and her little green and white brother, Luther?  No?  Well, then you didn't have a childhood.

Anyhoo, it reminds me of that game because, unless that part of my memory has failed me already, they always had to collect little purple sea urchins.  At least in one of the games.

 Not really sure what you call these things, but they were nice to look at, so I took a picture of them.

And another one.

I'm running out of things to say that are interesting to read.  But here's a hermit crab.

 Don't know what these are either.  But they looked nifty.  And creepy.

 I don't know if you can tell, but that's a fish....that's small....and it's looking at the camera.  So therefore it's cute.

True love.....starfish style.

I just thought this was a cool picture, so I decided to share it.

Ditto.

Because I have nothing to say about this picture.

And the sand dollars.  (I shouldn't admit this to the Internet world where everyone can laugh at my ignorance, but I feel like I should be honest with you and say that I didn't know before this trip that sand dollars were black and fuzzy.  Whodathunkit?)

Farewell, my friends, and have a lovely weekend!

Prepare your eyes....there's a lot of pictures and words

Another vacation come and gone.  And a whole lot of pictures. 

We went to Manzanita, Oregon again, which meant wind, sand, coffee, and cinnamon rolls.  The weather was fairly decent for the Oregon Coast; the only thing we had to wear when we went down to the beach was our windbreakers....and sweaters....and pants....and sometimes a sweatshirt....okay, so the weather wasn't that great, but it could have been worse.  When we went into town, though, we usually ended up just wearing our t-shirts and sometimes a jacket.  If the sun was out and we were blocked from the wind, it was perfect.  

The view from our little house that we rented was as lovely as ever.  We always try to get a house that has a view of the ocean and the sunsets.  Also, having a view of the ocean usually implies being in hearing-distance from it as well; my sister and I had the window open every night in our room so we could fall asleep to the distant sound of the waves lapping against the shore.

All in all, it was a fantastic vacation.  I had a surprisingly stressful school year, so going to the beach right after school got out was a great way to unwind.

This was the view we had from our house.  Aside from that house in front of us right smack in the middle of our view, it was perfect.  One of us, I believe it was my sister, came up with the idea that houses with the front row seats should only be one story tall, and they should have flat roofs; otherwise, houses that are behind them don't have as good as a view.  It's like sitting at the theater, and the view you have of the screen couldn't get any better.  Then along comes the super tall guy who just happens to decide to sit in the seat directly in front of you.  WHY?! 

This is our pet dragon.  We only get to see him when we go to the beach, and he always seems to be paralyzed or something, but he's a good dragon.

Remember that hike we took that I blogged about earlier?  Yeah, we ended up on his head on that hike.

It's funny, because "his" head and body are actually two separate land masses, but from this angle, it looks like a sleeping dragon. 

Going to the little local coffee shop there was one of our favorite past-times.  If you are ever in Manzanita, and you like coffee, tea, lemon bars, or cookies (or all of the above), you absolutely must take a morning or an afternoon to enjoy yourself at Manzanita News and Espresso.  It's a very cute coffee shop with a nice little area for outside seating, and they make the most amazing lemon bars.  

And coffee.  Their coffee is superb as well.

I believe there were only a couple days, maybe even one day, where we went without playing a single game. It's a fact of life in our family that you bring board games and card games to the coast.  We usually play something like Up the River, Down the River, but we branched out a little this time.  As you can see from the picture, we ended up playing Phase 10 Masters.  And we played it a lot.  Personally, I'm a little Phase 10 Masters-ed out.  We also played four-handed cribbage several times.

There is another local shop that we visit every time we are in Manzanita.  It's a game store called Overboard.  I'm fairly certain that we get at least one game every time we take a vacation there.  This time, we got one called Quickword.  It's apparently the "ultimate word game".  I beg to differ.  But that might be because I haven't won a single game yet.  In other words, I am terrible at it.  I blame it on the time limit--it puts too much pressure on me.

(Oh yes, and do you see that fabulous ring on my thumb?  I got that at Signature Imports in Cannon Beach.)

This is another game that we played, but it didn't involve a board or cards.  Bocce Ball is the ultimate game to play on a windy beach.  The balls are heavy so they won't get caught off guard by the wind, and it makes for cool pictures when they land in the sand.

And that's a very important aspect to consider when trying to think of games to play on the beach.

My dad has this awesome kite that is made for doing "tricks" in the air.  Well, one would assume that it's made for doing tricks in the air, considering kites don't usually do much when they're on the ground....

Anyway, it's a cool kite, and of course you must always bring a kite to the beach (unless, of course, you don't have one for some silly reason).  I've actually only flown this kite once--the time we were at the beach two years ago in fact.  I think so, at least.  It was a frightening experience, I'll tell you what.  These types of kites are about as hard core as a kite can get, and I swear, if my dad wasn't there keeping my feet secure on the ground, the kite would have gladly swept me up and away.  I'm not kidding either--my dad literally had to hold me down because whenever he let go, my feet decided gravity was too mainstream.

Needless to say, I've been too chicken to fly it again, even though I've grown quite a bit since then.

I was standing in the water taking picture of the ocean and of my feet in the ocean.  And I thought it would be cool to take a sequence of pictures of the water approaching my feet and swallowing them in its foamy wateriness.

So I did.

And while messing around with the continuous shooting option on my camera, I thought it would also be cool to do a sequence of shots of Piper racing after her Chuck-It ball.

So I did.

And while on the topic of Piper, I thought I would share this picture of her to the world.  Because her tongue is sticking out.  And for some reason, animals that have their tongues sticking out is irresistibly cute.  I'm still trying to figure out why. 

I know this is a lot of pointless pictures of a dachshund (and for anyone who clearly doesn't know how to say this word, it's pronounced dahks-hoond*--I don't quite understand how some people get "dash hound" out of it--it's German, not American, and Germans have cooler pronunciations), but....it's Isabel....and she's cute...and I really have no other excuse.  (And I know that the pictures in the top left-hand corner are really small, but I don't know how to make it so that you can click on it to make it bigger...I'm not that advanced yet.)

*Thanks you, dictionary.com, for pronouncing things correctly

What a fantastic sign.  I felt obligated to take a picture of it to share its pure awesomeness around the world for all to see. 

This bench is not allowed to smoke.

I congratulate this beetle for bravely marching along in the sand facing perils that are mere blemishes in the sand to the human eye.

I hope your journey fared well, beetle.

There is a ridiculous amount of ladybugs on the beach.  It never fails that I somehow transform myself into a rescue team for the countless ladybugs along the shore, because they're always in the wet sand close to the water; never in the nice dry sand where they aren't in danger of drowning.  

This particular one found a ride on my sister's hand while she was taking pictures of the sunset.

Manzanita, Oregon probably has the lamest selection of tide pools in the history of lame tide pools.  The most interesting things that I saw when we went there were two starfish and a minuscule crab. 

This was one out of the two starfish.  It was a good find, considering we didn't see much else.

And the little camera-shy crab.  He blended in with his surroundings and he kept trying to burrow into the sand, so he was hard to spot.  Not to mention he was incredibly small.

Oh yes.  And we can't forget about the sea anemones.  (Thank you, spell check.)  This one was actually kind of nice to find, because it wasn't the typical green one.  It was about as big as the crab, though.  But it was cute.

And the mussels.  They weren't terribly exciting, considering they're typically on every single rock you see on the beach, but I liked this little bunch because of the two red ones peeking out. 

I know that everyone has seen cool patterns in the sand, unless you haven't seen sand at all, but even though it's not a new concept or anything, it's still fascinating to me.

And I thought this was just a fun picture.  No, that lump on my side is not a growth, it's my camera case.  In case you were wondering.  I realize it's really kind of an awkward shadow of me, but I suppose you could say it adds to the visually pleasing aspect of the picture.  But if you don't find this picture visually appealing, there's something wrong with you I suppose I can forgive you.

One last thing that I absolutely love about the beach is the colorful sky.  One minute, it could be a brilliant blue, and then the next, it could change to a stormy, ominous grey....

 

....and then a few minutes later, the sun could be setting, reflecting onto the ocean and creating blues, purples, oranges, and yellows above you.

The beach can be a magical sort of place; you just have to pick the right spot to go to.  Going to Hawaii or California isn't quite the same as a quiet beach like this.  You get up to go running early in the morning, and you have the beach to yourself.  You go down to play Frisbee in the afternoon and not have to worry about stepping on anybody's fingers or invading anyone's space.  In the evening, you can take a walk in the sand, and there is no one to break the silence, so all you hear is the motion of the sea and your footsteps in the sand.......and the wind in your ears.  There's usually that too.

Was that an overwhelming amount of pictures?  I feel like it was.  I took me absolutely forever to pick ones to use for this blog post though.  I had about 1,200 some pictures overall, and ended up deleting about 300 of them.  So that took a while, and then I had to go back through them again to figure out which ones to use for my blog.  It was a tedious process.  And then there were those groups of pictures, like the sunset ones, where I couldn't figure out which ones to use because I liked them all, so I ended up putting them in a collage to make it seem like one picture.  That way you wouldn't have to scroll through 10 separate pictures of Isabel.  You're welcome.

To sum it all up, it was a very fun vacation.  We didn't do much, we saw pretty things, and we have cute dogs.