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The bridge and walking path to the beach

 We finally met with the surgeon, Dr. Parsons. He informed us that the rectal tumor had disappeared completely, but the one on Tom's sacrum was still there and could not be removed surgically because it could cause nerve damage. He suggested that more radiation might help to shrink that tumor.   So we have been waiting for our appointment with the radiologist, Dr. McDonald (aka the Death Angel) for the last three weeks.  We will be meeting with her later this week.

When the kids were little, we tried to spend some time at Beverly Beach State Park every summer.  Early on we tent camped.  We would bring all our bikes and enjoyed riding all over the huge campground. They put on movies and nature shows at night. When I got tired of crawling around on my hands and knees, we started renting their yurts. The yurts had covered decks, windows, futons, bunk beds, lights and heat and made camping much easier.  It took only a few minutes to walk to the beach. At one point the yurts became all but impossible to rent in the summertime because they were so popular, so we stopped going to Beverly Beach.

This year, while checking online, I saw two yurts available in October. Allison and Logan wanted to go so we reserved them. They were situated next to each other but with all the forest greenery they were also private.  Alli volunteered to drive, so we packed our camp stove, sleeping bags, and groceries into her car and headed out on a Sunday.  I don't know if Tom and I were ever the two people in the back seat for a trip.  It was fun!  "Are we there yet?"

Here are a few photos from our trip.

Tree roots in campground. This is huge. The mossy part
is about 18 feet high!

A spruce tree root mass from 4,100 years ago.

It was the foggiest I have ever seen the beach in 30 years.
Tom loves fireworks and doesn't read signs. Alli and Logan are
watching Tom hold and shoot a Roman Candle.

This was the sign we passed on our way
to the beach.

Tom roasting marshmallows at our campfire.

After our 1:00 pm checkout we decided to visit the Newport Aquarium before heading home. Logan had never been there and after growing up in Colorado, he loves the oceany things.

Alli and Logan are in a plastic bubble inside an aquarian tank with an eel.  He's a big guy.

Alli and Logan are posing by Diver Dan. Did anybody get that reference?  When I was a  really little kid I watched a television show about Diver Dan who was outfitted like the guy in this photo. He had adventures under the sea with puppet sea creatures.  Maybe it was just a local east coast thing.

Always my favorites, the jellyfish.  they are so relaxing to watch. Doesn't that top one look like a beautiful Victorian lampshade?

The aquarium has a walk through shark tank. Years ago when the kids were little, this was the area where Keiko lived.  Keiko was the star of the  1993 movie Free Willy. He had been captured in Iceland and displayed at several places including an amusment park in Mexico City before coming to the Newport Aquarium to regain his health and be prepared for life in the wild again. The Free Willy-Keiko Foundation and millions of school children donated  the money necessary to build the facilities to do this. Everybody loved Keiko.

In 1998 he was flown to Iceland and underwent training to prepare his for his release.  The idea of releasing him was very controversial.  Finally when he was deemed ready, he was released with wild Orca in August 2002.  However, about three weeks later he showed up in a fjord in Norway apparently seeking human contact and letting children to ride on his back.

His caregivers moved to Norway and conducted boat-follows for the next fifteen months. They found that he switched between different groups of wild killer whales, usually remaining on the periphery about 100-300 meters away.  Poor Keiko failed to adapt to life in the wild and died of pneumonia in December 2003  at the age of twenty seven.

Tom has a story about a time that we visited Keiko.  Maybe he'll tell it to you some day.