Tails of the Travelin' Trio: Let's Try Three

(Bandon, OR) Things had been working out so well with two dogs that Mike decided we’d try three today. Everyone thought that was a good idea except poor Slugger as he was the one getting left behind. But his leg was a little sore from so many days of playing on the beach that it really was better for him to rest a bit anyway.

We went in the morning today and the water was out a little bit further than previous days but still not far enough to really do any real tide-pooling. The beach was once again fairly devoid of people. So after getting past the fishing area, we let all three dogs off leash. As you can probably guess by now, the playing started up immediately.

As you're probably starting to realize, I love the look of waves gently rolling on the beach. I just love the colors and it always seems so peaceful.

It wasn't long until we happened upon a starfish just lying out in the open on the beach. I guess a wave must have knocked him off his rock at some point.

It looked like it may still be alive so Mike took it out and put it back in the water. We hadn't gone much further when we saw a purple one in the same situation. It seemed a little odd as we hadn't seen any the past few days.

Wazzu seemed very interested in it as well.....

.....but Boogie didn't seem to understand that you only look at sea life, you don't touch it. We immediately gave him a lesson as we don't believe in disturbing defenseless critters of any kind.

Then Sparkie gave him a lesson in the correct way to tide-pool.

We also came across a very large crab shell. We would have let the dogs play with that but none of them paid one bit of attention to it at all.

Finally, we saw a couple different types of anemone.

With the tide out a little bit today, we were able to get to a rock we didn't have access to the previous days. Of course this meant new climbing experiences for all. As you can see, Boogie had no trouble getting to the top - he even took time to enjoy the view.

Now he is King of the Hill!

Coming down is no problem either.

Even Mike and Sparkie made it!!

This guy made it easily too.....although I think he cheated.

You can't really tell how big and steep the rock is from those pictures. So I took this picture from a ways back so you could see what they really accomplished.

It was sunnier today than it had been in previous days. And since the beach was so empty we decided to go much further today. It seemed like the beach got wider and wider the farther we went.

Not only was the beach very large it was also very pretty.

I didn’t want to turn around – I just wanted to walk forever. But of course we knew that wasn’t possible for me so we turned around in the middle of a giant stretch of beach. It’s so fun to walk on this beach as not only is it nice and flat but there are so many interesting rock formations that look different from every angle.

If you look to the right middle of this next picture, you'll see where we came from - this is just after passing through the holes in the rock. So the original beach we started at is on the other side of those rocks.

You'll get a little bit of an idea how far we walked as the rocks in the distance between these two rocks are the same rocks that you see in the next picture.

This is where the two beaches connect.

This is looking down the beach from where we turned around on the second beach.

There is one group of rocks that I've thought were quite interesting all week. Finally today I asked Mike about them as I was sure there must be some kind of archeological explanation for these rocks in the distance.

Anyone care to take a guess as to why the tops of some of the rocks are so white?
Take another look and see what you think.

So I was waiting for this really long explanation when he informed me in just a few very simple words - it is all bird poop! Eewwwwww - yuck. That's a lot of bird droppings!

Let's move on to something a little more pleasant. That would be Sparkie on the beach. I don't know if it's her color or what but to me she looks so pretty on the beach. Here she is pointing at some birds.

Here she isn't doing anything all that exciting but I really like the reflection.

Oh, remember how I told you that Mike looked around so hard to find a flat place where we could access the beach? Well, here are what the other beach access places look like. Maybe that's why the beach is always so empty!

On the way back we came across some very small children playing in the waves. Sparkie had absolutely no interest in them as she was much more interested in what kinds of food people may have left behind up on the beach. Arg.

But Boogie was very interested in what these little children were doing.

He’d try to go out to see them but of course about that time a wave would come and the kids would start screaming and trying to outrun the waves. Boogie wasn’t sure what this was about but figured if they were going to scream and run he’d better run too.

Wazzu, of course, was worried that something must be wrong if the kids were screaming. So she went out to make sure they were okay and then Boogie felt brave enough to go along too.

There was one fisherman on our way back that was much further down the beach than all the other fisherman. So we didn’t have any of the dogs back on leash yet. Wazzu and Sparkie were very good and totally ignored them. But Boogie wanted to go check out the tennis shoes and socks that the people had left on the beach. Or so I thought. As I went over to tell Boogie to “leave it” (the new command we’re working on), I noticed he wasn’t paying any attention to the shoes. Right next to the shoes was their open container of bait – raw pieces of octopus! Boogie thought this was quite the delicacy and our “leave it” command suddenly had no meaning at all. I don’t think the dad was too happy about losing some of his octopus but the little girl that was with him kept saying it was okay and she even pet Boogie very nicely. Phew! We moved on rather quickly as the dad still didn’t seem nearly as cool about it as the little girl.

The dogs all really had a good time today. Here are a few pictures to show some of those moments.

How's this for a happy Wazzu.

Sparkie's always got something on her mind.....we're just not always sure what.

Boogie finds a lot to do on the beach. Where to start! Here he is with his new found treasure.

Here he is frolicking in the water.

And finally, scurrying down the side of a large rock.

The girls always enjoy playing together.

On the way back we had to take one last overlook of the ocean....oh yea, and do more rock climbing.

We're getting back to the end of our walk so that leaves me one last chance to get a picture of waves rolling onto the beach.

About the time we were leaving it started to get a little windy and a little cold. So by the time we got back to the RV we were ready for a warm lunch. Mike decided he felt like seafood so he went back to the little seafood shack we saw on the pier yesterday that was very busy and got some lunch to bring back to the RV.

Mike said his fish and chips were the best he’d ever had. I told him that my clam chowder was really good….especially if you didn’t like clams as I hadn’t tasted a one. He then said, come to think of it the menu just said chowder. Oh well, it definitely warmed me up.

Now it was little Slugger’s turn for an outing. Mike took Slugger to the river where he got to do a lot of swimming for sticks. Then they went to the beach and just sat there for an hour and watched people and birds. Slugger would do this for hours if you let him. He was very happy when they got home.