4/21/17 Surfin USA

Hey y'all! So yesterday morning brought rain showers again, but the State Park we are in has got to be the best one yet. It's Nehalem Bay State Park just outside of Manzanita, OR. We got here the afternoon of the 19th, and it's been great since!

Here are the details:

Every site has power and water, all sites are back-in, paved and have a 10ft x 30+ft grassy area with a picnic table and multiple Manzanita (I'm guessing) trees for good shade coverage/wind blockage. There are 2 bathrooms in the "non-reservation" part of the park and they also have free hot water showers (separated male/female). Now granted you can't see the ocean from any campsite, and there are only 2-3 trails through the huge sand dunes to the ocean, but the view from atop the dunes is amazing! The ocean in front and a completely hidden by the trees State Park behind you. Other than distant houses, you'd think you're miles from civilization.

We forgot the camera, but were able to watch an awesome sunset last night. There are 2 bike trails as well as horse trails and even a horse camp and a small craft landing strip. The only thing it doesn't have is wifi, but cell phones have the 4G LTE service. (Not really sure what that means other than reception is great......)

There are around 250 or so sites in the park, but they aren't crowded like some of the parks we have seen/been in. Half of the sites are reservation only, and the other half is first come - first serve. The crazy part of it all is that you get all this for $29/night. The cheapest we have paid so far is $22/night, but that is no power, water, or showers! We are going to stay here until the 1st, so if you're in the area, we are in E40. The only thing else we need is a surf board and a wetsuit for TJ and a boogie board and wetsuit for Lucas. We are gonna see about doing some bartering for those, we will let you know.

God Bless y'all and have a great day!

P.S. Update: yesterday we rode our bike about 2 miles into town and found a surf shop that  rents boards by the day, but won't sell any of his old rental boards until he gets his shipment of new boards in a month or so. What a bummer.... but maybe I can convince him to trade us a board for this set of Leupold Binos we never use. It might sweet'n the idea of being a board short for a few weeks.....BUT, he does sell boogie boards so we "took the plunge" and picked up two for the boys. Surprisingly the "my legs hurt" complaining didn't happen once on the 2 mile ride back to the park! We had some lunch and put on some dirty clothes (no sense soaking clean ones) and went to the beach.

So if you've never swam in the Pacific Ocean, it is not warm like the Atlantic Ocean. Not at all! It hovers at somewhere around the mid 50's. So, ya.....it was cold. The boys however LOVED IT and weren't cold at all. They didn't want to get out of the water! Both boys caught multiple waves and they both even got rolled a few times, but loved that too. I'm positive they will be begging to go again today, maybe after a double school day, so I can soak up as much sun as possible before freezing again!

I can't wait to get them to Cocoa Beach, Fl for some warm surfing, and maybe a few lessons for them from my cousin Cheyne whom they look up to as "my cool surfer cousin", this cold water stuff isn't gonna be fun for long.....well, probably for them it will be, but not for "dear 'ol dad"! I must say that I like this State Park even better now because it didn't cost me $10 in quarters to warm back up in the hot shower!!! I have a song that comes to mind, here's part of the chorus.... "Nobody else was surfin..... surfin Or-e-gon".... after the Beach Boys' song : Surfin USA.

Have a great day y'all! God Bless, and remember, if your in the Manzanita, OR area, stop by! We are in Nehalem Bay State Park site D40.... big green bus, you can't miss it!

4/20/17

Hey y'all! So this morning brings rain showers again, but the State Park we are in has got to be the best one yet. It's Nehalem Bay State Park just outside of Manzanita, OR. 

Here are the details: 

Every site has power and water, all sites are back-in, paved and have a 10ft x 30+ft grassy area with a picnic table and multiple Manzanita (I'm guessing) trees for good shade coverage/wind blockage. There are 2 bathrooms in the "non-reservation" part of the park and they also have free hot water showers (separated male/female). Now granted you can't see the ocean from any campsite, and there are only 2-3 trails through the huge sand dunes to the ocean, but the view from atop the dunes is amazing! The ocean in front and a completely hidden by the trees State Park behind you. Other than distant houses, you'd think you're miles from civilization. 

We forgot the camera, but were able to watch an awesome sunset last night. There are 2 bike trails as well as horse trails and even a horse camp and a small craft landing strip. The only thing it doesn't have is wifi, but cell phones have the 4G LTE service. (Not really sure what that means other than reception is great......)

There are around 250 or so sites in the park, but they aren't crowded like some of the parks we have seen/been in. Half of the sites are reservation only, and the other half is first come - first serve. The crazy part of it all is that you get all this for $29/night. The cheapest we have paid so far is $22/night, but that is no power, water, or showers! We might stay here for a bit! The only thing else we need is a surf board and a wetsuit for TJ and a boogie board and wetsuit for Lucas. We are gonna see about doing some bartering for those, we will let you know.

Well I'm off to the shower, then breakfast. God Bless y'all and have a great day!

several days in one

So we just got our mobile hotspot set up so here's what has gone one the last few days:

4/17/17

This morning we awake to ocean front RV spot in Kalaloch State Park on Hwy 101 north of Aberdeen, Wa. It's a beautiful Park with 2 bathroom location, 2 fresh water locations, and an RV dump. It's set up as a "pick your own spot" Park during the off season, and is only $22/night. No electric available.

Yesterday We walked a few miles along a gentle sloping sandy beach while the boys played in the shallow surf. There are tons of shells and we even found a complete Sand Dollar! Burgers while sitting in front of the ocean....pretty awesome! God gave us a beautiful sunset, and Shanesta took a bunch of pictures. 

We would love to stay here longer, but we need to be heading to Aberdeen today, they have a Walmart (meds), and a hospital (depending on how Lucas feels when he wakes up.... he bashed his shin pretty hard yesterday, and was limping pretty good last night before bed). Once that's squared away, we need to pickup a cheap laptop so we can load pictures from the camera on the line, I'm sure y'all would like to see where we are!

Well that's all for right now, I think I will try and find something to chew on, I've been up for almost 2 hours, and I'm starting to get hungry. God bless y'all, please continue with your prayers that God will send people to talk to us, especially those who need to know Him.

4/18/17

Well yesterday was an interesting one, that's for sure... we got to the hospital in Aberdeen, Wa at around 12:30 or so, checked in ( as some guy was barfing in a pan in the waiting room) and we sat there for about 20 minutes when we overheard  a lady talking to someone about that she had been there waiting since 9:00am for her son who sliced his hand open. We realized that the other 10+ people were in front of us, so we "checked out" and decided to see if his pain goes away.

Oh, and if you are in a bus, don't go to that hospital anyways, you have to back out of the parking lot, and go back up a one-way street after you destroy a fog light and scrape the snot out of your bumper trying to leave the teeny little parking lot they decided would look good on the side of a mountain...... just sayin.....

So after those escapades, it just got better. We sat in Aberdeen ,Wa Walmart for just over 3hrs waiting for Shanesta's meds to be filled.... they said it would only take an hour....... but we did find a small Acer laptop for pretty cheap, now we just have to find wifi so we can set it up, and use it!

But really it did get better, we ended up in a small town called Pacific Beach, Wa. It's absolutely beautiful here, and the beach is nothing but sand! We found a small "State Park" ( looks more like a really nice RV Park) right on the ocean, but at $35/night, we are leaving today. We have to go back to walmart and get some wifi thingy that will let us get online when we are somewhere that has no wifi. Mainly so we can post on here, as well as talk to family easier/more often. 

We do have a noticeable change in the boys' life, they no longer wake up and want to watch a movie, they want to go to the beach, or ride their bikes, or go for a walk (mostly it's go play in the surf) so that a definite praise for the Praise Report of the day!

God bless y'all, and talk to you later!

4/19/17

So we left Pacific Beach and headed further south. Astoria, Or (where they filmed Goonies) was crazy with people so we didn't even try it, though it would have been cool to see the Goonies house and also Haystack Rock where One Eyed Willies ship was. 

So we had to pass that by. But we ended up at Nehalem Bay State Park, and so far it's the cheapest place at only $29.night with full hookups. We can't see the beach (sand dunes in the way) but we can hear it an dwe are right next to the trail to it, so tomorrow if it's not pouring down rain, we will check it out. 

Conversions are not welcome in Long Beach, Ocean City, or Cannon Beach, unless you want to pay $50+ a night for a getto park! Don't even bother pulling into those towns.

Oh by the way Seaside, Or has a wicked cool surf shop with a bunch of old school and new school surf boards for sale. If we had $200 for a board and $100 for the wetsuit, TJ would do his best at being a surfin fool. Hopefully we can find a cheaper board for him and just have him wear a wool suit for warmth! hahaha!!!!!

Well gotta run, don't want to waste all our internet on one post, 5 minutes after setting it up!!!

God Bless!

Week 1 coming to a close

Blog update 4/15/17
Hey y'all, I hope this update finds you well. Right now We are in Forks, WA, and for the last 4 days we have been camping at the Quileute Indian Resort/RV Park on the Pacific Ocean. As I write this it is pouring down rain, and has been off and on for the last 4 days. Not really surprising though, we are just right down the road from the Hoh Rainforest. We packed everything up at the resort this morning and moved down the road to Forks,Wa for a night or two since they have a church here in town.

So here's how things have gone on our adventure so far..... day 1 (Sunday the 9th) we boondocked in Clarkston,Wa Walmart. No problems, and we even got to visit with some family that lives there. Amber did 2 wicked awesome murals on the bus, they are so awesome! Thanks again Amber, we LOVE them! We had a Good night with no issues.

The next day we drove about 400 or so miles to Auburn and boondocked at the Walmart there (with the managers "don't tell me your doing it, because we don't allow that here" approval) needless to say less than 30minutes later some high-speed rent-a-cop told us to leave. It was around 10:30pm when we had to leave. We were bummed because we were supposed to meet some family there the next morning, and we haven't seen them in over 2yrs. But God will get us together when we are supposed to be together.

Now wouldn't you know it but I was wicked tired (we all were, but I'm the driver) and my back was killing me from bottoming out on several huge pot-holes ( sometimes ya just gotta love air-ride seats) and there was not a single RV park, rest stop, or truck stop that was accessible from Hwy 5 in Auburn, all the way through Tacoma, and 30 some-odd miles further West on Hwy 16 ( the way we were headed anyway ) until we happened to see a Winco sign in Bremerton, Wa at about midnight! Now normally they would not allow overnight parking, but I guess TJ and I looked wicked tired, because the manager said ok, but we had to be gone in the morning. Praise the Lord for His provisions! The next morning at exactly 8am, he came out and said that it was time to head out. No worries, I was rested and ready to drive!

We fired up and headed out, destination: "Port Angeles, Wa and then we will see". When we got to Port Angeles, it was still only around 1pm, and La Push is only a 2hr or so drive away, so we got some supplies from Walmart and headed out.

So the local Indian tribe out here in La Push set up a wicked nice resort right on the beach. They have a regular hotel/motel building, as well as detached cabins, tent spots and full hook-up RV spaces. The RV spots are $27/night plus 13%tax until the end of May when tourist season starts, then they sky-rocket to around $70/night! Needless to say, we won't be here then! Now $27/night isn't bad if you think of hotel room rates..... it's actually quite cheap. But..... do some math and $27/night for 30 night is HORRIBLE!!!!! So once we find a spot to hang out for a while, it will not be at over $800/month space rent! Ya it's beautiful here, but not that beautiful! They have showers ($3/6minutes) and flush toilets, as well as porta-pots scattered here and there. The store that they have is pretty well stocked, and the prices aren't bad compared to other resort-type places.... a 1 liter Brisk tea is 99cents just like in Kooskia, Lewiston, and Auburn, though I imagine a price hike around May or so.... but that's just smart business.

Well, that's all for now, I'm not sure when I'll be able to put this update on the line, there's zero wifi here, and we don't know about the next place yet, but other than posting updates about our lives/travels, no internet is perfectly acceptable to me. I do imagine some people don't stay here simply because of that reason, which is a shame, because it's beautiful here.

God Bless y'all, please keep us in your prayers.

P.S.   We have our first major bummer/downer.....the humidity and rain here is affecting our paint job (like some of you said) and the paint is starting to "slip", meaning we are going to loose all the signatures and the wicked cool murals Amber drew.... Major bummer! I will load this update and pictures once we have a way to do it..... we have to buy a laptop for that, and Walmart has some decent deals right now, but we just have to get to one! So pictures have to wait.... Sorry!

Name!!!!!

Since we are heading down the road on Sunday after church, we thought we might-should have a name painted on the bus. So we spent the day painting. Here it is on the front of the bus!

Here's the back of the bus.

Now in case your wondering what's with the "F.R.O.G." It stands for Fully Rely On God, and is a great conversation starter!
And here's one of the sides too!

There's really not much else we need to do before heading out on Sunday, so we will post "departure" pictures when we can either Monday or Tuesday depending one where we are!

God Bless y'all and please pray that God will use us for His purpose!