Castles in the sand (6/21)

We are driving to the coast today, Canon Beach to be exact.  It is a beautiful drive to the coast.  We are beginning to think everyone had the same idea.  There is a long line of traffic.  It takes longer to reach Canon Beach than we thought it would.  The reason for the traffic became evident just out side of Canon Beach, they were having their 50 annual sandcastle building contest.  We got there just in time for the start of the event.  We have never been to a sandcastle building contest before.
What fun to watch the masters get set up.  The masters were allowed to start at 10:30, all other divisions start at 11:00.  Besides the masters they have a juniors, the sand flees, these are the really young kids, then the teen division and the small and large divisions.

The masters have all the trick forms and tools, including a home made stair stepper that pumped water to a hose with a sprayer on it.

This is used to keep the sand damp while sculpting.  The designs all were pretty cool.  While they worked we went into town for lunch.  We both had really scrumptious grilled cheese sandwiches made on sourdough bread with white and yellow Tillamook cheddar cheese.  After lunch we walked around town and I went into the candy store for some good old fashioned taffy, yum!
Time to go back to the competition.  Most have made a lot of progress, some still had a long way to go.  It was amazing  to watch now they worked the sand, from the young kids to the masters, the were serious about what they were doing.


These are all the divisions mixed together!

 Below are the Masters division

 Unfortunately we were not able to stay for the judging.  Joe wanted to get back to go to the races, I decided to opt out of the races.  The ocean and fresh air wiped me out and they were running 9 divisions and I knew it would be a long night.

Sunday morning we once again on the road again.  Our destination for this week is Mt St Helen's.  We are staying in Kelso WA at the Brookhollow rv park.  Very nice park, close to Mt St Helen's.  Once we park and set up it is the time we dislike the most, we need to do laundry and do our grocery shopping.
Before we know it is 9 pm and still daylight outside, it doesn't get dark until 10 pm.

Tomorrow we doing the coldwater peak hike, a mere 12.2 miles round trip with a 2000 ft elevation gain.  More to come!