Last week, I got a call from my cousin who lives in Arizona. He told me that he was coming up to Oregon for a week around Christmas, so he wanted to know if I’d be free to hang out while he’ll be in the area. I told him I could take some time off …
Despite having lived near the Oregon Coast I’ve never learned much about the ocean and the creatures that live in it. Sure, I love walking down the beach but, whenever my parents visit it’s like they expect me to have achieved marine biologist status just by proximity to the ocean. No, I don’t know what …
A couple of months ago, my old college roommate called me and said that he was going to be in Bend, Oregon, for a few weeks for work and he wanted to see if I could drive down to have dinner with him when he got into town. I drove down from Portland to meet …
On Thanksgiving, I had lunch with my extended family and I ended up having a conversation afterward with one of my younger cousins, who is looking at colleges in the area during their visit. I don’t really know much about him as his part of the family lives on the East Coast but as soon …
Last week, my entire extended family drove over to Astoria to visit one of the many beautiful beaches. My nieces were there and asked their favorite uncle (that’s me!) to take a walk with them down by the water. I agreed and we started walking down the beach when suddenly my older niece started running …
I was babysitting my nieces the other day and their current favorite cartoon (which seems to change every few weeks!) is Garfield and Friends from the late 80s, which is very convenient for me because the first season is free on YouTube. We watched the episode where Jon is gifted a live lobster from Maine, …
As far back as when I was in middle school in the late 90s, I remember being told that the San Andreas Fault was a ticking time bomb and that California would one day sink to the bottom of the ocean after an earthquake. I remember saying to myself in 7th grade, “Why would people …
Some friends of mine from college are planning to come and visit me in a couple of weeks and we’ve decided to head over to the Oregon coast. Since one of our friends lives out there and has a boat, they wanted to know if there were any islands off the coast. One of them …
One of the most famous aspects of the Pacific Northwest is the wide variety of marine life that can be found in the nearby waters. Next to green trees and the band Nirvana, it might be the thing that people think of first when they think of the PNW. People don’t often think about all …
The other day, I took my girlfriend out on a drive a little over 100 miles from my home in Portland. We went on a lovely walk for an hour or two and, when we came back, the ground where we parked was swarming with thousands of crickets. (I included a couple of videos of …