Yurt-Camping at Nehalem Bay

I'm a bit of a hoarder. But not like you think. Yes, I still have some of the baseball cards I collected from my youth boxed up in the garage, and yes I still have a few articles of clothing I wore in high school (they still fit, too, suckers). Letting go of physical items that might have some use in the future can create minor tension in my life. I have a similar tendency with information. To wit: my favorite time to visit the Oregon coast is in early fall, when the crowds of people return to their schools and offices, the winds calm to near nothingness, and the temperatures hover around perfectly-mild . I don't like telling people this, though, because I want to hog all of this to myself, or at least to my immediate family. So forget everything I just said and continue on to read about our latest Adventures in Testosterone.

Meg had reserved a yurt at Nehalem Bay--north of the Tillamook but south of the Seaside--six months ago, knowing the kids would have a Friday free from school. What she didn't anticipate was double-booking herself on a solo trip to the Emerald City of the Great North. So when she called me at the office a few weeks ago describing the dilemma, I waffled back-and-forth about whether to go or not--I needed to take a vacation day whether or not we kept the reservation--but seeing the weather clear up for the better, and remembering my past, nearly-flawless record of good experiences at the coast in the autumn, I decided to keep the reservation and tried my best to market it to the boys as an exciting adventure. The children and I would be content to lie around the house till noon, wearing our pajamas all day, but we also know how much fun we do have when we seek out the adventures.

I've long touted that we as a family don't need to plan trips to far-away, exotic locales when we have so much unexplored territory in our own backyard. Nehalem Bay is one such spot--virgin territory waiting to be discovered. As soon as I arrived home Thursday night, we loaded our gear into the van and braved rush-hour traffic trying to get through and out of Portland. The children voted to eat at DQ in the middle of nowhere off of Hwy 26 over Mo's at the beach in Cannon Beach where portions of The Goonies was filmed, but we had our own private restaurant for most of our meal (Edward vocalized his displeasure when other patrons entered the building while he was licking his soft-serve cone). Darkness had settled over the land by the time we entered the borders of the state park, but only one wrong turn kept us from finding our yurt. The kids were eager to unroll their sleeping bags and change into their pajamas, claiming they were tired and wanted to go to sleep (and not quite understanding that we were only staying for a night--Edward frowned and nearly cried when he learned this--thus not feeling a great need to do more). I thought they were joking until I heard Aaron conked out and snoring in the upper bunk. I failed to sleep well, what with Aaron scratching at the demons that are his eczema, and being rudely awoken by a battle of two largish mammals screaming and clawing at each other outside our yurt.

We were up with the sun (at least my stupid bladder was) and eating breakfast and starting a fire and planning how to spend the rest of the day. We had no idea where the beach was, but we locked the yurt, grabbed the football, and I resolved not to return until 1:00 p.m., when we had to check out. Earlier in the week I had joked with the boys that they should come to my football training camp (after Aaron expressed an interest in playing football next year), and I came home the next day with the younger boys outside holding their own training camp, and pleaded with me to do my camp right then. We held camp and I told them we could have a more comprehensive camp at the coast later in the week. We found the beach after a three-minute walk and a brief climb over some sand dunes that protect the park from the ocean. We saw no more than 10 other people that morning, so we played catch and ran drills and played games and held races to see who could run down the dunes the fastest (hint: I'm still the fastest in the household, and it isn't even close), all without having to worry about getting in anyone's space or having others get in ours.

Check-out time came quicker than we cared for, but we quickly loaded the van and drove out of the park right at 1:00 p.m. Our drive down the coast was a lazy affair, and we reached Tillamook so hungry that the kids were excited to eat at McDonald's. I can't stand the place, so I bought them lunch, watched them eat it, then snuck next door to Subway for something I wouldn't have to choke down. We were running short of time, so I decided to skip visiting the cheese factory, much to Edward's dismay, but we did have time to visit the Tillamook Forest Center, a place I remember fondly from a similar trip this very weekend three years ago. Ian and I spent most of our visit playing hide-and-seek outside on the trails along the Wilson River, while Edward and Aaron brushed up on their history of Oregon's forests. The final and, what proved to be a touching moment on the trip for me, was when Edward wanted to spend his own money to buy Ian a stuffed animal from the gift shop. The kid will probably always be broke because he doesn't value money for money's sake--he is the anti-hoarder--but his actions feel like a virtue I could learn something about.