We got back last night from a three-day trip to the coast with our friends the Pearson's: Chris, Cynthia, Jessica (12), and Natalie (5). It was a picture-book kind of experience, full of little things I kept trying to remind myself I would never see again, and would someday wish I could go back and re-live. We were just south of Manzanita in a campground behind the dunes on a stretch of perfect sandy beach that seemed to be at least a couple of miles long. We were in yurts: big semi-permanent tent-like structures on a wooden platform. The kids were deliriously happy pretty much the whole time. We had perfect, sunny weather at the beach, and they spent hour after hour playing in the sand with the Pearson's two little girls, or playing let's-pretend games in the trees all around the yurts. We had warm fires at night, and enough but not too much for the grownups to do. Chris took us out in his sailboat Thursday afternoon in a kind of protected area -- cove? inlet?. The whole thing was really nice, and I even have to say that I enjoyed the yurting experience; I was glad to have a real bed on a wooden floor, and well-kept bathrooms and a hot shower just a hundred yards away.
