We spent a couple days at the Oregon coast (highs of 60-65) after several days of 100+ in Portland with lows around 75. It’s still hot in Portland. We paid a visit (and a whole lot of simoleons) to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

Maybe they’ll use some of that dough to send their shark divers to shark school.

In the window where you used to be able to watch not-Free Willy swim by, divers float amongst sharks and talk about them. They even take questions from the audience.

A kid asked, “What’s the biggest shark,” and the diver hemmed and hawed for a while before saying “Great White.”

The MC in the auditorium asked the diver, “What about the Whale Shark?” The diver said “I don’t know if that’s a whale or a shark.”

At this point, 7-year-old Jr., who knows pretty much everything there is to know about sharks, walked out. (Jr.: The Whale shark is, in fact, the largest living shark.)

The diver went on to say he was pretty sure whale sharks are vegetarians (Jr.: they’re not, though they feed mainly on tiny phyto- and zooplankton).

If you go to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, my kid is available for consultations.

A great place to spend a quiet and peaceful Fourth of July.

Of course, we hit the beach, too, and enjoyed visiting tide pools left by unusually low tides.

Here are a few more photos from our trip. If you want to rent a beach house in Lincoln City or Gleneden Beach, give Virginia a call.

I grew up road tripping family style. Starting with a coast-to-coast odyssey in a playpen in the back of a VW Microbus, and working my way through car, train, bus, truck and plane trips of all sorts through most of the United States and Mexico and parts of Canada and Europe.

San Rafael Reef, Utah

My traveling days, along with my ability to live out out of a backpack for months at a time, ended when I had two children. Or so it seemed. This summer, with the little ones getting bigger and with the aid of such niceties I never knew — like air conditioning and DVD players — we embarked on our first epic family road trip across the iconic landscapes of the American West. Twenty-six hundred miles of desert, forest, rock, canyon, mountain and gorge.

Shoshone Falls, Idaho

The joy of going overland is that the journey becomes a major part of the trip, rather than an annoyance to put up with on the way somewhere else. I love seeing the landscape change as I go. Read the rest of this entry »