For our summer vacation this year we decided to go back to Florence, Oregon, but unlike last year we talked some California suckers into coming with us. After much delay and rescheduling the Carpenters and the Blanchards agreed to meet in Florence, Oregon, on July 14th, 2005.
We left for the Oregon Coast on Wednesday afternoon and drove most of the way before stopping to spend the night in Tillamook, Oregon. We then got up Thursday morning and drove to Sand Lake, where we enjoyed a day of riding on the beach. Sand Lake doesn’t have many big dunes, but it sure is a fun place for kids and families to ride. Wendy and Adam enjoyed casual riding along the beach while Scott and Jenna entertained themselves by playing in the sand.
After a day of riding at Sand Lake, we headed down to Florence and met up with the Blanchards at the Driftwood Shores Resort. We spent the next 3 days riding ATV’s, playing Yahtzee, flying kites and dishing out plain old BS. Friday, we rode around at the Sand Dunes Frontier Park, and on Saturday we spent the day riding around at Spinreel south of Reedsport. At Spinreel we enjoyed a long ride through the dunes and ended up following a river heading to the ocean. Once we were all tired from riding, we spent some time flying kites and figuring out how to do some tricks. The wind was strong enough to break some string and kept us running.
Now, for the trip home. As we packed up and said our goodbyes, the Carpenters planned to spend Monday at Crater Lake. However, we decided to do a little deer hunting just north of Roseburg instead. Yes, you read that right, we were hit by a deer. No, we did not hit a deer, a deer hit us. Minding our own business we saw some deer in the middle of the road. We slowed down to give them time and room to figure out where they were going. However, some other cars did not seem to care about the deer and started honking their horns. Then suddenly, a deer jumped out of the ditch and landed right on our windshield. Didn’t hurt much of the truck but sure did shatter the windshield to pieces. After cleaning the glass off the kids and scraping deer jerky off the truck we found a place to fix our windshield. It took 6 hours but we did get it replaced that day (a whole other story). We ended up spending the day in the local Roseburg park/police station watching movies with our portable DVD player while we waited for our truck to be repaired. Once we could leave, the lovely but extremely hot and humid town of Roseburg, we continued on to Crater Lake before heading for home.
We enjoyed our stay at the Driftwood Shores Resort and had a great time visiting with our friends the Blanchard’s. Thanks for coming guys. For those of you who like riding ATV’s I would recommend a trip to the Oregon Coast (watch out for deer though).
Next year we plan on going to Yellowstone and going after some bigger game. Maybe we could hit an Elk or Buffalo?
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