Vacation Recap: Lincoln City, Oregon
We just got back from our third consecutive year visiting the Oregon Coast with our family. This trip has become a tradition for us to go on after Jarin finishes wheat harvest. Our kids look forward to this trip every year & when we ask them where they want to go, “the beach!” is always their answer.
The Drive
This is probably the worst part of this trip. The drive is almost 6 hours one way, and that’s without stopping to eat, go to the bathroom, or stretch legs, which definitely has to happen at least once for everyone’s sanity. It was harder this time than it ever has been and honestly, I don’t know if we’ll do it again until our kids are a lot older just because it was so hard.
To prepare, I packed each kid a bag of activities. Henley’s(5) favorite was probably the Color Wonder Mess Free coloring pages. If you haven’t bought these for your kids before, you should! These are also our go-to for church because the markers only color on the special paper. I also got her a sticker by number book that kept her pretty occupied. Kellen(3) wasn’t really entertained by much of anything, which made things hard. He did a little bit of drawing(then started biting his crayons) colored his Color Wonder sheets for a little bit, and ate lots of snacks. Peyton(18m) was the most entertained by books. I got her some new books with animals & the fur you can touch & she loved them. As a last resort, we also had an old iPad with a few shows downloaded on it and the only one who watched them was Henley for short periods of time until she got bored and wanted something else.
For snacks, I made sure Peyton had a spill proof snack cup that I could fill and hand her, and then I use these bowls for the big kids. I use the same bowls for handing them meals in the car to keep everything contained. The snacks they preferred were Bamba Peanut Butter Puffs(if you’ve never tried these, they’re so good!), Calbee Harvest Snaps, fruit snacks, granola bars & fruit leather. Nothing that made too much of a mess like crackers because I know the mess those would make.
The House
Some things we always look for when booking a house is that it looks kid friendly without breakables, dangerous decks, etc, and enough rooms that we can put Peyton in her own room and that the older kids would have their own bed(jokes on us because Kellen ended up sleeping in our closet & Henley took the bed in Peyton’s room). I always bring a portable crib if the house doesn’t specify that it has one and a SlumberPod is a must! It totally blacks out the crib so you can keep the lights on in the room if you need to. I just stick a sound machine in the top pocket or on the floor outside of the crib and it’s amazing. Henley slept in the same room as Peyton and they both slept great.
We also love to find a house that we can walk to the beach from. This is so much easier than loading everyone up in the car & trying to find a parking spot at the beach.
Something else that is a must is that there is a washer and dryer. In our 3 days there I ran 2 loads of laundry because it’s inevitable that someone spills something, swimsuits need washed or someone didn’t pack enough socks. It’s also nice to have almost everything washed, dried & folded to put back in your suitcases to put away at home instead of coming home with a ton of laundry to do.
The Beach
This is our kids’ favorite part of coming here. I always bring a basket of sand toys, Kellen brought a dump truck and we also love to have a picnic blanket for a semi-sand free area to put things or sit. My kids would play here for hours and hours if the weather is nice and thankfully we’ve always lucked out with sunny 70º days in mid-September.
The Food
This is the part that probably takes the most planning for me, but is SO worth it! Not only because of the money we save, but the time and energy it takes to bring all our kids to a restaurant for all our meals. I was super strategic in the meals we had so that they were cost effective and had little waste at the end because nobody likes throwing out a fridge full of food because they can’t take it home.
I wrote down everything we ate, made a pre-shopped grocery list & a list of tips for you to take and save some of the headache on your next trip! Get it for free below!