Last week was the Morris family’s annual trip to the Oregon coast. After a quick stop at Joelle and Paul’s (Nate’s cousin and new cousin-in-law) wedding in the Salt Lake Temple Friday afternoon, we hit the road for A-town. We didn’t get on the road until about 4:00 in the afternoon, but Harry Potter 7 on CD helped keep us awake till our arrival at 2:00am Ashland time.
We stayed in Ashland Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night was the second annual Morris Family Tennis Tournament. We had another perfect record this year. As the reigning champs we were sure that our matching Ivory Ridge Swim and Tennis Club T-shirts would guarantee a repeat victory. However, we were soundly defeated. We suffered an agonizing loss in the 1st round to the Dan and Cam combo and then couldn’t recover losing to Dave and Shane in the 2nd and Jake and Stacey in the 3rd. We sadly had to relinquish the Championship title to Jake and Stacey.
Monday morning we piled into the cars again to drive to the coast. We stopped and had a picnic lunch at the Jedediah Smith State Park, which is a Morris Family tradition. It was overcast and even sprinkled on us a little bit while we ate lunch. Only the incredibly manly men were brave enough to swim across the river and jump off the rocks on the other side (sorry Shane…you’re not included).
When we got to Harris Beach (in Brookings, Oregon) we spent a few hours basking in the light from the overcast sky. It was cloudy (not unusual for the Oregon Coast) but it wasn’t windy (unusual for the Oregon Coast) so it wasn’t very cold. The water is always freezing though, regardless of the wind conditions. There were huge waves crashing pretty close to the shore, and Dave, Jake, Shane, and Nate were brave enough (or shall I say foolish enough?) to go out and “swim” in them. My dad and I stayed closer to the shore, although we were still getting pretty wet. My brothers kept trying to convince me to go out further with them saying I was already wet and could just dive under or jump over the waves when they came. I’ve been knocked over by waves for almost as many years as we’ve been going to the coast so I wasn’t about to go out further. I told them several times that the waves were even bigger this year, so there was no way I was going out there just to get knocked over. Just as I finished saying it, a big wave caught me off guard and knocked me under – I came up sputtering and with a twisted ankle that was pretty sore for a few days. We played baseball for a while on the beach with a wiffle ball and big red plastic bat, and Nate and Dave climbed to the top of a big rock. I couldn’t watch when they got to a little part where they were basically rock climbing. We found out the next day that someone had fallen off the same rock and had to be rescued by a US Coast Guard helicopter dropping two rescuers and a stretcher / board thing down. Luckily the guy survived. We’ll see if I let Nate and Dave climb it next year.
I decided there isn’t much that can top a day at the beach, then a night of eating tin foil dinners, talking around the fire, and camping. It was so fun to be able to spend this time with my family, and to spend some time outdoors (and away from work!). The rest of my family stayed at the coast for another day, but we left early the next morning to drive back to Utah for work. It was a long drive back since coming from the Coast added almost 3 extra hours, but in my opinion it was well worth it!!
