Bandon to Boardman to Grants Pass

Other than an amazing Italian restaurant, there was not a ton in Bandon. It is now home to a famous golf course, but we weren't aware of that until we'd left town- ha! We left our hotel (the only non- Holiday Inn Express that we stayed in the entire trip simply because there was not one nearby!) without breakfast because theirs was lame. We thought we'd see something along the way to our morning's hike. We were wrong. I made a 71.5 year old woman hike over 3 miles without feeding her!!! Whoops! Ok, fine, I did give her a Kind bar so she wasn't just starved! 

I kept seeing posts about Samuel Boardman State Park on Instagram and it did not disappoint. It is right along the 101 and just amazing.

Arch Rock

Samuel H. Boardman State Park is GORGEOUS

No words.

Susan ready to hike

The steep drop off

A walk through the woods...

The view

A clearing

Finishing the last climb

Feeling victorious after a 3 mile hike

We intended to do a further hike, but the trail got really steep and jagged and we didn't want to risk injury so we turned back. I also think we might have been hungry and we hadn't seen a single other hiker which was both cool and a little worrisome -ha!

We finished visiting the 12 mile park by pulling off at each viewing point and walking around. It was a beautiful day!

Whale Rock

Room for Jackson in this selfie
:(

One of the pull-offs had beach access so we helped ourselves!

Beach walk

Such a pretty beach

After all of that I did finally feed Susan. McDonald's. True. Story.

From there we followed the 101 to the California state line. We decided to explore the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park in Crescent City, CA since our morning hike was cut short. If you're a loyal blog reader you know that I love trees. You also know that we've seen giant sequoia trees so I thought my days of being impressed by a tree's size were over. I was wrong! In case you wanted to know the difference between the two kinds of trees it comes down to this: the giant sequoia is the largest tree in the world in volume and has an immense trunk with very slight taper; the redwood is the world's tallest tree and has a slender trunk. Now you know.

REDWOODS

Susan taking a quick break

Did it make a sound when it fell?!

A LARGE log

Susan dwarfed by the tree!

We left the woods and headed back into Oregon to go North this time to make our way to Portland for the wedding. We drove through the mountains with the windows down letting the 102 degree air whip us around like clothes in a drier. It was awesome!

View from the room--not bad!

We stayed for the evening in Grants Pass, OR. We had a nice view of the Cascade Mountains from our room.

Smelling her wine

Oregon is actually known for its wine (you know, like Northern California since they're neighbors and all) so Susan wanted to try some out. Good thing she had a DD available!

Bread and water for me

The wine bar we went to was so fancy that I couldn't find anything on their menu to eat. True story. Susan tasted her pinot noir wine flight, bought a bottle and we headed out for Mexican food. Win!

Leaving Naples

We were complete and utter beach bums for the rest of the trip. We spent our days in the waves and our evenings taking in the sunsets.

Catching a cloudy sunset

Gorgeous.

Whoa he's a handsome man

Beach day!

We had a lovely time. Thanks for lending us your place, Susan! 

Jackson's good day

We'd spent many days celebrating my birth so I decided to let Jackson run our entire Saturday. He chose to:

sleep in (love that guy), 

go for a walk around Naples and its farmers' market,

get coffee at his favorite place (Bad Ass Coffee Co), 

grab the goods and make a picnic-style lunch at the condo, 

go for a long walk on the beach in the blazing sun, 

play in the waves, 

soak up the sun on the beach, 

play 9 holes of golf, 

have dinner at Cheesecake Factory (using a birthday gift card I'd received), and finally to
go for another walk to help with the fact that we shared a slice of cheesecake. 

It turns out his good days aren't far off from what I'd plan so it was not too much of a sacrifice. :)

My guy in his happy place

His shot

Happy little golfer

This video isn't great, but it was shot from our balcony through the screen. It was a 20-25 foot putt and he sank it (I'd just said there was no way he'd make it, too, whoops!)!!!

Cheesecake

Naples

We got up at 4:15 to head to the airport by 5:00. We left on time from our house! This never happens!! We got to the airport and it was a ZOO! Goodness. We'd read about summer travel creating long lines but had yet to really experience it until now. Thankfully we have our handy TSA precheck so security only held us up by about 5 minutes (can you tell that this was the best travel-related purchase ever?!). We got on our flight, sat together in an exit row with only 2 seats (love when that happens), plugged in our Bose noise-canceling headphones into our iPads (thanks for both sets of headphones and both iPads, Mom!) and before we knew it we'd landed in South Florida. Hooray!

We grabbed our rental car and headed South for Naples. We grabbed a quick late breakfast/early lunch at my favorite place, Tropical Smoothie, before heading for the condo to get changed to head to the beach.

Tropical Smoothie for...brunch...is a must!

We've mastered the turnaround from plane to beach so we were on the sand by about noon.

The best way to spend an afternoon!

Jackson got out my bodyboard and spent time playing in the waves

I tried to join Jackson in his bodyboarding fun (since it is my board from college), but the water was too choppy making me too unstable on my bad knee. UGH! I'm so over these injuries. I headed for shore and spent the rest of the afternoon reading magazine and soaking in the warm sun. It was lovely.

We finally left the beach, got cleaned up and then returned for sunset.

We love the view of the pier!

Petefish

Ahh, this view

We knew we wanted to have The Cove for dinner so we headed that way for my final birthday dinner.

Handsome date

32.

DOCK SHRIMP NACHOS

"LOTSA LOBSTA"

The summer is not busy season down here (I cannot imagine why not-- a little humidity never hurt anyone) so the restaurants are far more affordable. We had shrimp nachos, clam chowder and Jackson's two lobsters for $65. That's incredibly reasonable especially for Naples so now we're committed to coming down more during the off-season! The restaurant was not crowded, our server was very engaged and entertaining and it was just a lovely evening. We had a splendid day in one of our favorite places!

#32

I felt much more grateful for my birthday than I have in prior years (as affirmed by my previous 11 years of posting on Facebook- thanks for the memories, Mark Z.!). I think the accident reminded me that life can sure change in a hurry and that mine is pretty nice right now. 

Anyway, you won't see pictures of my early birthday dinner with my Dad and Diana, nor did I photograph the homemade dinner Jackson made for me on the 13th before leaving for a work trip because sometimes I forget to take photos! 

I could get used to coming home from work to presents! 

As I mentioned previously, I had to work on campus Monday (13th) to get my computer and renew all my access to things. I came home to an awesome dinner and gifts from both Jackson and my Mom and Guy. I got a new iPad (thank you, Mom and Guy) and a new Apple watch band, perfume and my favorite cupcake from Jackson (all of which I really wanted so hooray). It was great and then Jackson had to leave (yes, we'd just gotten home super late the night before from NYC so he only got to sleep for a few hours in his own bed- poor guy!). 

I planned to work on Tuesday (my actual birthday) and then meet Jackson in Bloomington (his work location for the next day) in the evening. The weather did not cooperate, though. It rained all darned day which made driving seem less than desirable to me (I'm still not 100% back to my normal self about driving- I actually hate it now because I feel a sense of panic each time I'm behind the wheel) so I decided to stay home. I worked, read a book and just felt a little down. I am, luckily, not at all used to feeling lonely. I took myself to a late lunch at Chuy's and sat alone in the bar reading on my Kindle before deciding to just go home and snuggle with my pup.

Sweetest little puppy company!

I have renewed my devotion to making people feel special for their birthday, though. This was a good reminder. Due to some mail issues I did not get a single card on my actual birthday itself and only got a single phone call (thanks, Heidi, Jax and Jocelin for the singing greeting). I think with Facebook and texting we've lost a bit of that human contact that we really still need. I cried a couple of times about being lonely and unimportant to people (hey- I may be 32, but I am still sensitive) before finally calling it a night. (Note: I also think working remotely makes one a little more lonely than normal as I generally get greetings from co-workers and only got one this year.)

I woke up the next day feeling better about things (perhaps we put too much pressure on birthdays being excellent days) and got to work. Then Jackson came home and we had a quick dinner together before I went to meet my friend Amber for a movie. She agreed to suffer through "Me Before You" with me which was really just 1.5 hours of listening to me cry. She also brought me back coffee from her recent trip to Puerto Rico so I was elated!

Thursday I worked again (ugh, retirement was sure short!) and met my mom for a quick lunch. Working remotely is nice in that you can kind of set your own schedule and it frees you up for lunches around Indy!

Susie picked us up for my belated birthday dinner-- we had to wait for Jackson to be back in town! She "owed" me a trip to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse so that is where we went. Man, it was an awesome meal!

Susie and Jackson looking nice

Petefish

Chocolate strawberries are my favorite fruit

We had a seriously awesome meal (complete with lots of dessert) there and cannot wait to win the lottery and return one day- ha!

Doesn't MacK look just bummed to go
stay with Grammy again?!

After dinner Susie took MacKenzie home with her since we have an early flight the next morning. After this trip to Florida we'll get to keep MacKenzie at home for almost an entire month before shipping her off-- what a treat!! 

Easy like Sunday...

On Sunday morning we decided to go to an area of town we'd not seen before to grab coffee at one of my favorite places (The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf) and have some famous NY bagels. This area is down by the NYU medical center and some riverfront jogging paths. We ate our breakfast then headed for the riverside to take it all in. We strolled by the United Nations compound which was quite impressive before deciding that it was just too hot to log many more miles.

The views never get old

The BEST iced coffee

It was at this point that I mentioned to Jackson that most people would hate traveling with us. We dislike spending big money on food. We dislike spending money on transportation (remember we only rode the subway once and caught the train to Joe's at a station a 25 minute walk from our hotel just to save on the fare). We don't really like museums or tours. We certainly don't do much shopping. We just like to see things. I totally see where this would be super boring to most people, but we dig it. We like just taking it all in and seeing how other places function.

Anyway, it was hot and our hotel had HBO so we headed back in the catch another movie. Remember, we don't have cable at home so this feels very luxurious. We watched "San Andres" which was actually quite riveting. Our extended checkout only lasted until 4 pm so we finally packed up and headed out to grab a bite to eat for dinner before heading to the airport. We stopped at a place that had good reviews and naturally it sucked. That is seriously why I stick with chain restaurants- you know what to expect and never waste money on gross food.

We grabbed our luggage from the hotel and called an Uber (using Jackson's account this time so we could use the $30 rebate again- ha!). It was a quick ride to the airport and worked perfectly. I love this service!! This time we did know to tip our driver. Rookie mistake last time- whoops.

We got to the airport far too early as the TSA pre check lane was open and we buzzed right through (best gift I've ever given Jackson- in my opinion) security. We finally boarded the plane and pilot announced that we were #20 for takeoff. Ughhhh. NYC is not for those of us lacking patience. Everything is just crowded and busy. I'll be glad to be back in little Indy for a bit, but it was a fun trip. We were able to see a lot and still just enjoy the sweet hotel we'd booked! Win!

Reunited

The best part about a trip ending is always coming home to this little furry girl. She had a grooming appointment first thing Monday morning so Jackson took her and I picked her up after my first day back at Ball State. (It was a good day back at work, by the way!)