Lord, keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth. Amen.

The routine, if two days makes a routine, is that while Pam fixes b’fast I sit here at the table and crop/edit yesterday’s pictures and write the blog post. Then we go out and about for the day. At some point during our wanderings we go into Florence, 14 miles south of the campground, so I can check my cell phone (no reception here) and go online. That’s when the post I wrote in the morning gets uploaded to this page. So what you’re reading now, even if you’re reading it 30 seconds after I post it, was written hours earlier.

Yesterday, after a b’fast of fried eggs and bacon (w/coffee!) and our tepid showers we went to the beach just a couple miles down Hwy 101 to the Heceta Head Lighthouse. It was halfway between low and high tide. We walked the beach, sat in our fold-up chairs to read, took a few pics of the lighthouse and its environs, and then drove down the road to a turn-out that overlooks the same area. In other words, a lot of nuthin’!


I promised Pam I wouldn't give this pic a title. But if I were foolish enough to do that, it would be titled...?

There's a cool "historic" bridge we drive over every day en route to Florence. This is the view from the beach.

One of the reasons we like the Oregon coast is because it's not the flat sand of the So. Cal. beaches, a place designed for 20-year old bodies. I didn't have one of those even when I was 20, and I don't surf. But the rocky coast here is one picture-worthy view after another.

Here's a view right over the cliff on one of the many road turn-outs. You can't tell from this 2-dimensional view, but it's a couple hundred feet straight down into a churning surf.
So, does the cross and flowers in the lower right memorialize someone who foolishly crawled over the rock wall that serves as a barrier and then accidentally fell? or someone who jumped? Either way, someone who loved them climbed over, taking a pretty big risk to put up this memorial.

We came back to the campground for lunch and more of the same...nuthin!
I did finish a book. A year ago on Facebook I asked for summer reading recommendations. I got several of those books but didn’t finish the stack. A week ago I started “The Book Thief,” recommended to my by a former student/friend who now works at Barnes & Noble while her husband pastors a church in Michigan.
(Note: I have two bushels of former students/friends, and that counts as one of life’s biggest surprises/joys.)
Very good book! It’s sold in the “Juvenile Fiction” section at B&N but don’t let that deter you. It’s troubling in sections but it should be. It’s about a girl growing up in Nazi Germany. I won’t tell you more lest I ruin any part of the story. But if you’re a reader, get the book. Push through the first 25-30 pages and you’ll be hooked.
BTW, last night I started “To Kill a Mockingbird.” I read it several years ago but it’s definitely worth a re-read. I find myself thinking about the similarities between these two stories.

++++++

We're at a coffee shop in Florence checking email and posting this blog. I have some great pics for tomorrow...I'll keep it a surprise until then. But BAD NEWS: the battery in my camera is dead. This camera is old enough that it has a rechargeable battery and I didn't bring that part with me. I knew we wouldn't have any place to plug it in. We saw some more cool stuff this morning but no way to record it for posterity. Should we buy a cheap replacement (that uses regular batteries) here in town or just deal with it?
Drat!!

That's all for now. Several other on-line tasks to complete. We're havin' fun doin' nuthin, and workin' hard at it.
Turns out vacation works pretty well!