Joy's Dream House

(Haceta Head, OR: 24 Aug 2010) After only three weeks cruising the Oregon Coast looking for our future perfect home, we found it! It's got everything she wants. Big front porch. Unique. White picket fence. Ocean view. Unfortunately it's the old light keepers house at Haceta Head Lighthouse. They have turned it into a B&B so someday we may stay there just to see what it would be like.
Oh well...we'll keep looking.

Home

Seaside, OR (Aug 6, 2010) So we made it. It was somewhat anticlimactic after all these months of traveling. There was no banner, no band, no one to pat us on the back and exclaim about how amazing it was that we had come from Virginia to Oregon and all we have seen and done. Just Ed and I crossing into Oregon from Washington state and a sign that said "Welcome to Oregon". But it was enough. In fact it felt right, like coming home. It was an overcast, drizzly day as we drove into Seaside and got ourselves set up at the campground. The drizzle stopped and we decided we NEEDED to see the Pacific Ocean today so we bundled up and started out. By the time we got there (about a mile and a half) blue sky was breaking through and the sun was peeking out which we took as a gift of God, just for us. We walked on the beach for awhile and I wished I had not dressed so warmly! A wonderful welcome home! So...WE MADE IT!!!
As if it were there just to add an emphatic punctuation to our own cross-country journey we snapped a picture of the Lewis & Clark statue in Seaside with the appropriate inscription, "End of the Trail". By the grace of God and in his providential plan this is not the End, this is the Beginning!

First Visit to Newport WA

(Newport, WA: 31 July - 4 Aug) My step-mom Nancy has lived in northeastern Washington State for 10 years. Until now we had never been able to visit. The story is worth telling of how she came to be here. When my Dad was alive they retired from the Navy and moved to Snohomish, WA. My next door neighbor in the dorm at Bible College had taken a church in Maltby WA a few miles from where Dad and Nancy lived. They ended up visiting the church and meeting Dan and Deb Peterson and became regulars. Dan and Deb are our age and ended up also having 3 daughters nearly the same ages as ours. Dad and Nancy sort of adopted the Peterson family or the Peterson's adopted Dad and Nancy. Whatever it was God was in it. They all grew in their walk with the Lord and became a support for each other as God would have it. My Dad died in 1994. About a year later Dan and Deb moved with their girls to Newport, WA. Dan and Deb invited Nancy to move near them, but it took some time before she was ready. About 4-5 years later Nancy moved there too.
We were able to go to church with Nancy; a church where the Peterson's were one of the founding families. It was fun to put faces with names of people Nancy has spoken of and have been a big part of her life the past 10 years. The church body takes seriously the scriptural admonitions to take care of widows so Nancy has been well looked-out for. Monday night we had a dinner with Dan and Deb and the two oldest girls, Mishael and Melanie, and their families. (Youngest daughter Kelly works as a nanny in Chicago). The girls married guys from the fellowship and we enjoyed getting to know Zach Miller, Mishael's husband, and her daughter Morgyn. Melanie is pregnant and not feeling well, so we enjoyed watching Josh, her husband wait on her hand and foot. Daughters Abigail and Anna were full of energy but also helped Mom. Joy had the special blessing of holding Mishael and Zach's newest addition, Philip Emery, the baby boy taking my Dad's name as his middle name.
It was a good time and good to know, now that we're on the left coast, it won't be 10 years before we visit Nancy and our friends in Newport again!