Oregonian Water

No, not the drinking water (which, incidentally, is very good). The swimming water! In the past month and a half (can't believe it's been that long!) we've been to the "beach" three times (more info on the "" later) and also to some fresh water places (rivers, waterfalls, etc.) pretty much every week. Dallin LOVES the water - every time he sees a body of water that's not frozen he without fail says, "I want to jump in that right now." And he normally does. I've even seen him jump in semi-frozen water in Finland in the middle of winter. But I think Dallin finally met his match in Oregon - the water here is freezing!! Here, they don't call it the "beach" - they call it the "coast." When we went for the first time we couldn't believe that even though there were a ton of people lounging around, there were only like two that were actually in the water. So we assumed that everyone in Oregon was just wimpy so we took off our shoes and started walking in the water.... and our feet felt like they were being amputated. It hurt SO much. And we thought it would wear off after a few minutes, but no - even after ten or so minutes (which felt like ten hours), our feet were still killing us. Dallin tried to show the ocean who's boss by going further into the water - he almost died in the attempt (not really, but it looked painful). Regardless of the freezing water, we have still loved our time at the coast - it's beautiful, especially with the trees, mountains, and rocks that surround the area. We have especially enjoyed Cannon Beach + Haystack Rock - these pictures are from when my dad went with us (I will follow up with a blog post about his visit momentarily):

I am not really that much taller than Dallin is.

Love this photo.

Notice feet coverage for feet and heads. The surfers were only in the water for about 15 minutes tops.

Yes, we love each other.

We were definitely more successful getting into the fresh water - before we left Utah, we casually looked for wetsuits to help protect me from the cold (I have been a cold wimp ever since I got back from my mission in Taiwan - read: tropical island). They're normally really expensive, and even at thrift stores they were still around $80. Well there was a garage sale down the street from where we live and lo and behold a 6'2" surfer girl was trying to sell one of her wetsuits for 25 bucks! Total blessing. I put that wetsuit to good use when we went tubing while camping at Oxbow Regional Park (look it up - so amazing!). We thought it was pretty funny that we spent about as much time getting the wetsuit on as we did in the water. Oh, well. We still had a great time tubing with our Wal-mart tubes. And the wetsuit really did work well! One of the highlights in the river was watching this family on the shore with two little kids. They were fishing - well, both were involved with fish. The little boy had about four fishing rods on the shore. We saw him try to land this enormous salmon - everyone on the beach was cheering him on! That is, until the line broke. :( Still, we couldn't believe it - it seriously was about three feet long. The little girl was "taking care" of a fish that had already been caught - she had him on a little string like a leash in the water. She would walk up and down the shore, tugging him along and calling his name (Jeffrey). We felt pretty sorry for Jeffrey - I certainly wouldn't liked to be tugged around by my lungs. Some other water escapades include two waterfall hikes - Oneontah Falls and Wahclellah Falls. We're about to go again to those falls with my brother this weekend and we are so excited!