Sandboarding in Oregon

After we left Vancouver, we drove about 7 hours to where we were staying for the night in Oregon.  We got in very late, but we were only spending the night there before heading west to the coast.  I was asleep when we drove though Portland, but apparently it's a pretty cool city and I wish we had gone there.  Anyways, in the morning we drove to the coast and this is what I consider to be my first time seeing the Pacific Ocean.  I remember driving up a hill and when we got to the top, there it was right in front of us -- the mighty Pacific.  I freaked out.  I love the ocean and I was so, so excited to see the Pacific for the first time!  The best part of the whole thing is that my first sighting of the Pacific was in Newport, Oregon which means that I have now been in Newport, RI (for those of you who don't know, RI is my home state) and Newport, OR -- coast to coast (I've also been in Salem, MA and Salem, OR, but that's not as cool as the Newport twin cities).  As soon as we got out to the beach, I had to go in the water and it was absolutely freezing!  But it was still awesome!

First picture of the Pacific!

Just taking a dip in the Pacific :-)

We didn't really have any plans for things to do in Oregon, but we soon learned that Oregon is known for its sand dunes so we ended up going to Sand Master Park in Florence and doing some sandboarding on the dunes.  Neither of us had ever been sandboarding before.  Actually neither of us had even heard of sandboarding before.  It turned out to be a ton of fun.  It's essentially like snowboarding on sand.  We had a lesson with a guy named Joey who is a world class sandboarder.  He was predicted to be the world champion in 2011, but got in a car accident and couldn't compete.  I don't know if he won in 2012, but he was expected to...the competition was after we were there so I never found out what happened.  Anyways, Joey claimed that we would probably fall, but that it wouldn't hurt.  That was a lie.  I only fell once, but it really hurt haha.  After our lesson, we had rented our boards for the rest of the day, but we only spent a few hours sandboarding and then we rode a dune buggy which was intense, but so great!  Our driver was crazy and we were bouncing all over the place.  It was fantastic.  After our dune buggy ride, we headed out and drove down to California.