On May 1st, we left Nehalem Bay State Park. We had stayed the max of 2 consecutive weeks, and had to move. So we packed up and headed farther south. The good/bad news (99% good) is we have our car now. Shanesta's brother Sam and our Brother Jacob brought it to us on the 29th. Thanks again guys!
So now the dirty......the 1% bad news is we now have to pay a stupid $7/night extra car fee if we park the car by the bus.... and only because we can't tow the car..... if it was towed by the bus, it would be free. I think we need to have our Jeep fixed pretty quickly then we can ditch the car and save $200/month in extra vehicle fees! The 99% good news is we can now get into many more places to visit/see that we wouldn't be able to in just the bus. (like this McD's parking lot). We can also drive out of the beach towns to grocery stores that don't charge $17 for a whole (and tiny) chicken that you still have to cook! Example, last week while we were in the area, we took the car to Cannon Beach,OR ( a cool little town about 20 or so miles away from the Park we were in with tiny little streets with what seemed to hold the entire west coasts worth of people and cars) to see Haystack Rock which was used in the awesome movie Goonies. It was pretty cool to see it and all the tide pools full of life in front of it. I would have ran over someone or something trying to get the bus through there!!!
So anyways I want to do a quick final review of that park, having had 2 weeks there. Once again it's a great park. The bathrooms and showers are cleaned daily (which is a good thing with all the people that use them). The roads are kept debris-free. The 2.5mile mostly flat bike path isn't nearly as long after two weeks of bike riding back and forth to Manzanita! The staff, both the Park Rangers and Volunteers are really nice, though I think I would like the free "rent" the volunteers get for the 3 days per week that they are actually on duty versus completely gone in their pickup, or "tossing back cold ones"... I might find someone to talk to about doing that in the near future.... I can use a leaf blower for a while to get free space rent (basically).... not the drinking part!
Sorry I digress, anyways after 2weeks there, we would definitely recommend the Park to anyone, but would suggest that during the off season, don't make a reservation and just come on out. I say don't make a reservation because while we have neighbors 3-4spaces away right now, but most of the time people are 5+ spaces away (in the non-reservation D,E, and F Loops), the Reservation Only A,B, and C Loops are packed full of people. We don't hear any parties over hear, where as when on a night walk the other day, there was a big party going on over there. I can't imagine trying to sleep through that one!
Anyways, we know we are going to spend a lot of time in state parks, but the free water, sewer, electric, and hot showers are kind of spoiling us!
After a Nehalem Bay, we went to Beverly Beach State Park, and while it's decent, I wasn't to impressed, it was a 3/4mile car drive for the boys to go surf, it had a rain forest theme..... The road is paved, but the parking pads and bathroom paths are just gravel, and we had a small pond directly behind our site, so we "enjoyed" a free frog concert each evening for a few hours. The bathrooms and showers were clean and well lit, and the trails were easy to follow, even if you have to kick out a handful of gravel from your sandals/shower shoes during each trip. So just a few days later we moved (on Thursday) to South Beach State Park.
South Beach State Park is very similar to Nehalem Bay State Park, with paved pads and roads, it does have gravel paths to the restrooms/showers, but the gravel is large enough it doesn't get in your shoes (which is a good thing since even though I have been trying to do as much bare footing as possible to toughen up my feet, I still have wussy feet!) The only downer about here is they seem to have a mosquito problem..... might just be our area in the park, we will have to see about that.
Ok, so that's all for now. Not sure when we will be able to post this, we ran out of Internet a while ago, so hopefully we can find a place to update everyone and everything today, since it's raining again.
God Bless y'all, and please keep praying for us!
P.S. sorry no pictures yet, we are still trying to figure out this laptop....seems to be an internet only laptop.... kinda weird....
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