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Posts Tagged ‘summer’

Rainforest at Cannon Beach

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2014

We hiked through a rainforest at Cannon Beach, and it was beautiful! We were at Ecola State Park, where we could see breathtaking views from the side of the mountain. The park is right beside the beach itself. The air is humid, and the greenery from the moss and ferns is so vibrant! Take a look at this massive tree with lots of greenery growing on top of its huge branches!

The sunlight shone through the trees to give the path an almost green glow. We saw a fallen tree with moss growing on it. Some of the trees were hundreds of years old.

We parked our car in one of the two parking lots and hiked up to the lighthouse lookout, where the lighthouse was still quite far away. The trail was two miles, so the entire hike was four miles. The scenery was beautiful the whole time. You could look down over Cannon Beach for a while until you were around the side of the mountain.

If I had been alone with some paper and a pencil, I might have sat down and written some poetry. Look at this path… Doesn’t it make you feel inspired?

My daughter and I began counting rings on the tree trunk to see how old the tree was when it fell. This gave us an indication for how old the thicker trees were.

We found lots of mushrooms during our walk. Mushrooms thrive in damp environments, so I was not surprised. These mushrooms looked almost cartoon-like!

Some of the varieties I had never seen before. I would have brought a mushroom guide if I had known we were going to see so many varieties of mushroom.

Some were growing straight out of the tree trunks. These are called shelf mushrooms.

This shelf mushroom looks like blackened lava from a volcano!

My husband took this picture from a low angle so that you can see how small you feel among such tall trees.

So many beautiful scenes presented themselves as we climbed the mountain. Here is a scene from Cannon Beach that includes Haystack Rock.

Then you see partial views of the ocean and seashore through the trees .

Many rocks jut out of the water. One of the larger rocks has a hole through it.

We thoroughly enjoyed hiking through the rainforest at Cannon Beach!

Find out what else we did while we were at Cannon Beach: Our Cannon Beach Vacation

Tags:Cannon Beach, field trip, geography, mushrooms, rainforest, summer
Posted in Family Life, Geography | 9 Comments »

Tide Pools of Cannon Beach

Wednesday, August 27th, 2014

The tide pools of Cannon Beach were beautiful. Here are some pictures we took on our recent vacation to Cannon Beach. You have to look up the tides of Cannon Beach in order to find out when the low tides are, so that you can find the tide pools. There are no tide pools at high tide because the ocean is covering the area. It’s only when the tides retreat and leave behind pockets of water that you will find beautiful creatures residing in their midst.

If you go to Haystack Rock (the triangular rock jutting out of the water), you will find the best tide pools there. We went at three different times of the day, and there is a big difference in what you see. When we went in the afternoon, there were lots of people, and it was hard to find even one sea star. We finally found one, and after half an hour at the tide pools, we had located about five sea stars in total. There were lots of anemones and hermit crabs.

The second time we went was in the early morning around 6am, which is a much better time to go. Not very many people were there. We saw a large crab and many other creatures we hadn’t seen the previous afternoon. Best of all, we saw maybe 50 different sea stars, all hugging each other and overlapping sometimes. It was beautiful. Up on the rock you could see puffins nesting, if you looked closely with binoculars. I’ve always loved puffins, so this was a nice surprise.

The sides of the rocks were covered with barnacles and other shellfish. The rocks were alive, as you could hear them clicking shut. My son saw a couple of mussels opened, and he touched them before they retreated into their shell and snapped shut like a Vanus Flytrap!

Here is my daughter picking up a hermit crab. She liked the hermit crab to walk along her hand. After playing with it for a while, she placed it back into the water.

Kelp covered a lot of the rocks as well. In the early morning, you could pull back the kelp like a curtain to find crabs, fish, and other sea creatures that were hiding from the light.

My husband went to the tide pools at 3am one night when he couldn’t sleep, and he said the tide pools were spectacular! He saw enormous sea stars that were two feet across. He saw crabs that scurried away when he shone his flashlight on them. The colors were beautiful as he shone his flashlight on the sea creatures in the tide pools in the middle of the night. Unfortunately my husband didn’t take a camera with him, and the tide pools themselves were an unexpected surprise.

As we sat around the campfire one night, my son Stephen wanted to hear more about the tide pools in the middle of the night. My husband’s description seemed incredible, and we wished we had another night in which to grab flashlights and explore the tide pools when they were thriving with so much life!

Tags:Cannon Beach, summer, summer fun, tide pools
Posted in Family Life, Fun Summer Activities | 6 Comments »

How to Build a Sand Castle

Wednesday, August 20th, 2014

We saw sand castles on Cannon Beach as we were walking to the tide pools, so we snapped pictures of some of them. I have always loved sand castles! The best ones have a specific method for why they hold together so well. Here are some tips to building a sand castle, followed by a fun video showing each of these steps.

How to Build a Sand Castle

Step 1: Carve a circle, build a trench, and dump the sand in the middle of the circle.

Carve a circle with a shovel in the sand, the area where you want to build your sand castle. (You could make a square or rectangle instead if you want, like the picture above.) Then start digging a trench at the circle line, piling the sand in the middle of the circle in a big heap.

Step 2: Get buckets of water, and dump them into the middle of the sand pile.

You need lots and lots of water, so go back and forth from the water to the sand circle, dumping the water in the middle.

Step 3: Build the castle mountain, from which you will carve the castle.

The woman in the video used a large bottomless bucket to build the main part of her castle, but most of us don’t have that. Instead, you can just build up a mountain of wet sand, packing it down tight as you go, because you will want to carve it next.

Step 4: Carve the castle.

Carve the shape of the castle little by little, starting at the top and moving down. You can add stairs, windows, castle turrets, and other details. Use a simple table knife if you don’t have sand sculpting supplies. You can also use buckets filled with wet sand, turned upside-down.

Step 5: Add the final details.

Add bridges and carve the shape of bricks into the walls of the castle. You can get as elaborate as you want. Then stand back and admire your work.

Here is a fantastic video I found on how to build a sand castle, using each of these steps:

We saw a Lord of the Rings sand castle as we were walking along. My husband and sons thought the Mountains of Mordor were super cool!

Here is a closer picture from above the Lord of the Rings sand castle, showing more of the terrain:

We thoroughly enjoyed these sand castles! Every June there is a sand castle contest where even more spectacular sand castles are built!

Related product: The Wonderful World of Sand and Dirt

Tags:Cannon Beach, castles, sand, summer
Posted in Family Life, Fun Summer Activities | 4 Comments »

Summer Beach Scavenger Hunt (free PDF)

Monday, July 7th, 2014

Here is a fun Summer Beach Scavenger Hunt for you to print out:

Summer Beach Scavenger Hunt (PDF)

When you’re at the beach, you hear the sound of waves lapping against the shore, and you smell the salt water sprayed all around you. Why not capture some of those things in photographs? My husband and I took the following beach photos. We took many photos of footprints, for example, and we chose the best one, where my husband decided to get the waves of the ocean in the background. You can also give prizes for the best photos in each category of your scavenger hunt. Here is a list of some things that you would find on a beach: