We went for dinner at Roseanna’s Cafe again and walked on the beach afterwards. A land artist made a very cool spiral out of seagrass, kicking off this blog post dedicated to amazing things seen on the beach! Remember when we mentioned that there’s a tunnel through this huge rock that separates the regular beach from the bonus beach? At the center bottom here, you can see the north side of the tunnel entrance. This morning the tide was way out when I went down for my morning run, and so I was able to go further north than we’d…

Saturday we set out to explore 2 of the three scenic capes in the area, Cape Lookout and Cape Kiwanda. On our way south to Cape Lookout, we first stopped at a salt maker, the Jacobsen Salt Co. Not much to say but they harvest sea salt and process it in vats in this building, and have it packaged to distribute in their Portland facility. From the trailhead at Cape Lookout, we stopped at an overlook and could see the Three Arches rocks that are at Oceanside, confirming that there is at least one arch that is only visible from…

After leaving Lewis & Clark in Portland, we drove west to the coast. We rented a house near Oceanside, Oregon, which is a seaside town in the southern part of the northern coast. The Oregon coast is broken down, in our Fodor’s book anyway, into northern, central and southern coasts, and we are staying at the southern part of the northern coast. The nearest bigger town is Tillamook, which US readers may associate with the cheese of the same name. We arrived after dark so couldn’t see anything out the big windows in the living room, but we could hear…

On our second day at Lewis & Clark we had lunch with Miles in the dining hall, visited his room again and got some decorations up, attended a session with a professor, and also attended the opening convocation ceremony and a family picnic afterwards. First, on the way out of the tiny house hotel, I took just a few more photos, showing the courtyard from a few different angles. Then John and I made a few stops to pick up supplies for Miles and then headed to campus. Here he is in his room. Recognize the Chicago flag (and sheets!)…

Miles had a great time on his outdoors trip to the coast and arrived back at Lewis and Clark on Tuesday. He had time to get partially settled in and meet up with new friends, then we flew out to Portland on Wednesday for orientation activities. Miles’s residence hall is called Spruce, and it’s in the Forest Halls group. Still early days on decorations! Beatrice sent us with cookies for her ‘little Milo’! After a trip to Fred Meyer (big super store chain in the west) we split for different activities and then John and I drive to our very…

The Chicago Triathlon was scheduled for Sunday and in some ways the weather was looking way better than last year. The air and lake temperature were in the low 70s, clear skies, low humidity. However, the lake was very choppy and for the first time in the Chicago Tri history, they cancelled the swim portion. The event became a Duathlon, with a run-ride-run pattern. But first let’s back up to prep on Saturday, when I started off the day at yoga at Garfield Park, held outdoors. The agave plant there is in bloom and grew right out through the roof!…

Miles headed off for college today, where he’ll start with a weeklong trip along the Oregon coast with new classmates. It was an early morning after a late night, hence the tired faces! We’ll have more to report when we go out to Portland next week to join miles for move-in days.

Our front parkway and small garden inside the fence really got away from me this year, and let’s face it, both needed some professional help. Here was the overgrown mess as of yesterday: I hired a landscape gardening company to not only clean it up but set it on a better path forward. They did an amazing job! Thank you, Taylor Made Landscape! Some of the plants were our original plants that they moved, like the Solomon’s Seal, the Black and Brown-eyed Susans, and a nice centerpiece hosta that had been really buried in the parkway weeds. Other plants are…

Hope you all like goats… a lot! Sarah and I went to goat yoga at Garfield Park Conservatory today. They’ve been doing goat yoga on some Saturdays all summer, with Natalie, the no-goat Saturday yoga instructor, also teaching this class. She said that at the beginning of the summer when the goats were very young all they wanted to do was nap on people’s yoga mats, but now they are quite energetic and there was no sign of napping. It was really delightful. The class was held outside on the grounds just southwest of the conservatory building. As you can…

Miles lookalikes are clearly spread throughout the world. I did a real doubletake at his doppelganger on an outside wall advertisement this morning. For the record, Miles doesn’t see the resemblance and thinks instead that his parents can’t tell him apart from every other bearded young man out there. Let us know what you think! PS I think Indian formal wear really suits him!