A couple of summers ago, I went on a backpacking trip along the northern Oregon coast with Eric & Mike. It was an interesting "wilderness" experience, as half of our hiking was done on conventional trails in the forest and the other half was done on the beach.

This morning, I went for a jog with Maddie and we passed by a lot of kids on the sidewalk waiting for the bus. As I ran past the kids, some of them gave me odd looks, which seemed to ask "Why on earth would anybody choose to run along the road and not on a playground?" For some reason, I began thinking about our beach hike as I ran. I think it was because of what happened just south of Haystack Rock near Cannon Beach...

The three of us woke up early (thanks Mike) to make it around Hug Point while the tide was out. We could see Haystack Rock off in the distance to the north and we began plodding our way along the hard-packed sand next to the receding waterline. We were in a great mood and I seem to recall Eric and I holding hands and skipping along (this may or may not have actually happened). As we approached the south end of Cannon Beach (by Mo's), a schoolbus full of children parked in a nearby lot and all of the kids came streaming out of the bus and running along the beach in the direction of Haystack Rock. Of course, one of the alpha males decided that the kids should race to the Rock. Off they went, sprinting right past us and giving us odd looks, probably because we were carrying big backpacks. They ran and ran as fast as their legs could carry them and we just kept on hiking. After a couple of minutes they were probably 300 yards ahead of us and quickly began to tire out. One by one, they stopped running and you could clearly see that they totally misjudged how far away they were from Haystack Rock. We kept hiking along and within a couple of minutes we had passed by the lead group. It was the classic Tortoise & the Hare story. The kids were seriously surprised that we had caught up to them and a few of them looked so beat that I was afraid they wouldn't be able to even walk the remaining distance to Haystack Rock (about 5 minutes away).

There's no particular point to this blog, so I apologize if you're disappointed. Just wanted to recount a good memory.

Oh, by the way, we each had 7 pieces of pizza and a doughnut for lunch in Cannon Beach. Lunch was followed by one of the greatest naps of my life, as all three of us lounged in the grassy area by the whale (you know the one), warmed by the sunshine and shielded from the wind.