Time for a day at the beach! 

                                     

And this is why!


 

Yes, I turned 65 yesterday! OMG, can you believe it ? Sixty-five!
I'm old! I'm a dinosaur!
James gave me that card ... jeez, hon' .. just rub it in, will ye!

               

My mum send me those two puzzles. They look like fun! Paris and what looks like a terrace somewhere in the Mediterranean .. one of these days, I'll go back there!

But for now we went to the beach, just south of Lincoln City, a small area called Taft.
Of course we brought coffee and of course there was cake! 
Two humongous slices of real Birthday-cake this year!

       

I usually bake some kind of a pie but this year I treated myself by not having to do a thing.
James made breakfast and the pie was made by Target! 

It was overcast but not cold and we found ourselves a nice peace of driftwood to sit on.
The view was the best. How I miss the ocean ...

After eating waayyyy to much cream, we went for a few short hikes at various nearby developed trails which allow several routes of discovery throughout the wetlands around the bay. 

                                  

These wetlands consist of rich tidal marshes, mudflats and spruce-hardwood swamps which are crucial habitats for salmon, migratory waterfowl, and wading birds.

     

Salmon berry and Red Elderberry

           

These were all very nice, easy walks. We didn't see a lot of wildlife but we spotted quite some spring-flowers and shrubs.

Getting hungry we drove back to the bay and had a late lunch at Mo's Seafood and Chowder, a well-known Fish restaurant here in Oregon which opened in 1948 and is famous for it's clam chowder.

It offers beautiful views of the Siletz Bay and the Pacific Ocean, especially if you can grab a seat at the window like we did:

                                                            

Of course we had the chowder as well as rock-fish tacos, coleslaw with bay-shrimp and I splurged on an oyster shooter with hot sauce!

                        

Afterwards, while we were in the neighborhood, we decided to drive inland a bit, following the Siletz River, and check out a few RV Parks.

Although we're not really looking to move right now, and if we were, we would probably not go into an RV Park again, but who knows, we might be interested in buying property here in the future. It's such a beautiful area:

It's a beautiful area with lots of plant and wildlife, while the river contains the greatest diversity in fish species on the Oregon Coast, as it contains all types of salmon species, as well as white sturgeon!

We came across a small herd of Roosevelt Elk:

The campgrounds were all quite nice, all of them had beautiful river views, but what we didn't quite realize, or forgot about, is the fact that the problem with the river that close means that most of them flood during the winter!
No wonder that many of the houses we saw along the road were built high on stilts!

I guess we'll have to re-think about this living-at-the-river plan ... we've been through several floods when we lived in Louisiana and we'd rather not go through that again.

The rest of the week went by rather uneventful as usual.
The weather has been quite nice with temps in the sixties and mostly dry except for a little rain on Tuesday.
According to our landlord it's already getting too dry out there again. Not good for his newly planted Christmas trees!

     

'My' wild birds, like these House Finches, are looking a bit more colorful these days. 
It's a natural 'thing', all to impress the ladies!

I've seen some Goldfinches come by to check out the feeders but I didn't have their favorite seeds out yet so they quickly moved on.
I hope they'll be back because I since than brought out the Thistle seed, their food of choice.

This pair of ducks sort of live at the pond and often look for spills underneath the feeders.
I guess they enjoy seeds as well .. 

                                     

And I finally finished this puzzle. For some reason it took me a while although it's not a particular difficult one.
I just didn't feel like puzzling much as of lately:

I'm not reading a lot either, none of the books I started have been of much interest to me ..  
It might be the weather as well, too cold to start all kind of summer things and too warm to stay inside all the time.
Oh well, I usually just give in to being sort of bored, it kinda serves a purpose as well and I know it will change again ...
This is what Google has to say about it:

Yes, boredom has a significant purpose : it acts as a functional signal that prompts the brain to seek new goals, enhances creativity, and drives personal development. It moves our minds away from overstimulation, activating the the default mode network to encourage self-reflection, creative thinking, and problem-solving. 

There you go ... what he says!