Pages

Monday, August 08, 2011

Florence Oregon Tourist attractions

We took our annual dune bug ride out into the dunes.  
As always, everyone, including Grandma had lots of fun.  We learned from the past to cover up as much skin as possible to avoid eating sand and keeping the wind off us.
   Actually I think we were the most prepared people out there.
That's right people  We are pros.


Grandma took us over to show us a Armed Forces memorial wall they built down in Old Town Florence.

Both Grandpa and Great Grandpa have a brick for their service.

We also drove over to Sea Lion Caves.
But there were no sea lions, they were all over at Strawberry Hill, so no pics of sea lions.
Just one of my little rugrats.
And, in one of the state parks, they have wild bug eating plants.
These are the Cobra Lilies.   Logan was excited to see them.
Well, for about 3 seconds anyway.
Then the excitement dimmed and it was time to move on.

And that's about it for the tourist attractions in Florence.

Chinook Winds

So we took a mini vacation in the middle of our Oregon vacation up the coast at 
Chinook Winds Casino and Resort.
 

They had this awesome package for a room right on the beach, with money to spend on food, gambling and even some to check the kids into a great little play club so we adults could get some much needed shopping time at the local outlet mall.
Inge and Kaitlyn drove over to meet join us.
The beach was beautiful.  Windy, but beautiful.  
The kids spent most of their time digging a hole in an effort to get out of the wind.

This was the view from our balcony.
We really could not have asked for more.   Its was beautiful
Inge and I shared a room and mom stayed with the kids. When we got up the first morning, this is what we saw from our balcony.   The kids already had mom up and on the beach by 7:20.   Apparently, they needed to get an early start on their hole.
It was so windy, Chloe had taken to walking backwards during her search for items to decorate their hole.
And when they weren't diggin' their hole, they were feeding the seagulls from the balcony.

(the grateful seagulls)

And another beautiful night sitting on the balcony.





Mom watched the kids while Inge and I headed to the casino to make our millions.
Did you know it's pretty much all electronic now?    No more coins dropping into the tray.....
God I loved that sound!
Now you just print out a ticket.   Not too exciting.   
Although the machines did do that sounds of coins dropping...but it wasn't really the same.
So Inge and  I figured out that, if we cashed out every time we won, we could get back some of the money they gave us to play (from our package).   
Of course, this took a while since we were playing mainly penny slots.
Our average pay outs were about 5 cents....
(I am NOT kidding, enlarge Inge's photo and you'll see!)   I think I even had some two cent payouts.  
We did play a few quarter slots and a dollar slot ONE time.  But that really was WAY to rich for our blood.

I think Inge won more than me, but I hit a jack pot with an $11.00 payout.  Which doesn't sound like much, but I was playing the penny slot at the time....For all I know, I may have hit the only jackpot there that night.

All in all, I think we walked away with about $83.00.   
That's HARD, COLD, CASH my friends!!
(no, not EACH, $83.00 all together, but WE considered that night a huge success!


We had a blast! The best part was that the package included all this money to eat with, so we ate, and ate, and ate.....I think I gained about 7 pounds.
You know, I just realized we didn't get any photos of the food!
It wasn't all that pretty....but let me tell you, the dessert bar was fantastic.  
We learned that you needed to get there fast to get the good stuff.  
So the second night we headed straight to the desserts before we got our dinners.  We started with 5 slices of key lime pie and 5 cream puffs sitting at the table, before we had even gotten our dinners.  (and NO, none of those items were for the kids, we made them get their own)
You'd think we would have been embarrassed about all those desserts, but really, we had no problem with it.
Stay tuned for my next post.....
"My first weigh in at Weight Watchers"

The Zoo and Aquarium

So after arriving in Portland, we met up with Inge and Kaitlyn at the Portland Zoo and visited some of our old friends.  This is the guy who scared the pants off Logan several years ago.  Each year we go back, hoping Logan will willingly go up to see him.   And each year, it's a no go.   Logan only got this close because the audio wasn't working on him today (that and Grandma was there to protect him)



We also visited the Oregon Aquarium again.

Always a nice way to spend the afternoon.


I think the kids spent the most time with this little guy... and he wasn't even part of the exhibits.
He came right up to the, even stood on Chloe's leg to see if they had any treats for him. 
I'm guessing he's a regular.




The kids just love hangin' round the aquarium!