Rockaway Beach

I took the kids to Rockaway Beach for the day. We drove through town looking for a restroom before heading for our favorite beach spot. However, after finishing at the restroom we noticed they were having some sort of town celebration or something. We found that they were celebrating this man arriving into town on foot at the exact moment we happened to be standing there. Here he is pushing his cart. Actually on our way into town we had passed him on the side of the road and I thought he was a homeless man walking the road. He had left from Rockport, New York in March and had walked the entire way across the United States (over 3,000 miles) and was just arriving in Rockaway, Oregon. I was pretty amazed with this guy. Thought he was crazy, but passionate about something and followed through. I was impressed. Amazingly, for this state who usually loves to report on stuff like this, not a single news reporter was found. I never saw anything on the news about him either. Such an incredible accomplishment for him and here he has only a handful of citizens from Rockaway, Oregon to congratulate him on his 5 month 3,000+ mile journey. Well, we gave him a nice round of applause and the kids followed him down to the beach where he proceeded to get down to his shorts and dive into the freezing water. Kind of a cool experience for the kids and I to "happen" upon. Here are the kids standing in front of him as he's preparing to go into the ocean.

On a different note, we also created a little history for our family today as well. This was Ethan's first time touching the sand on the Oregon coast! Last year he was so little he just stayed bundled in our arms. His reaction was so fun to watch. He kept trying to find a place to walk "off" the sand. He just kept wandering for a while finally realizing there wasn't a way to get "off" the sand. He then dug in with the other kids and had a blast playing in the sand.

We even brought the kite and had some great high-flyin' fun. We do love visiting the ocean.