Got back from the beach yesterday. Oregon coast sand, Pacific ocean, visit a relative. Flying kites, flying dogs, flying kids, a sand-storm in the rain. Lots of fun. It’s 45 and raining, so the kids have to go wading, running, and splashing in the ocean, of course. I only half-jokingly say we use a color-coding system – red is fine, blue means time to head home. The dog, which we think is a border collie – greyhound mix, is FAST, and she loves to chase waves coming in; I paced out her strides, and she’s covering something over 10 feet per stride, and she’s picking them up and putting them down at a rate of a bit more than four strides per second, or a bit more than 30 mph (camera doing 8 frames per second, slightly more than a full stride every two frames; at 5 fps is seems like almost a stride per frame). Found out that the Cold Steel “Special Forces Shovel” also makes a mighty fine kids sand-toy, MUCH better than the normal cheap plastic one, and sprout #2 can ALSO have fun chopping on drift-wood and kelp with it. Offspring #1 preferred the Gerber folding E-tool to build a fox-hole sand-castle. Got down to the Tillamook Air Museum, looked at old war-birds with sprout #2. Pics below the fold.
Oh, yes – The Stars Came Back will also pick back up tomorrow.
With all the pics below, click to embiggen.
Oregon beach sunset
Levitating dog, running on the beach, chasing waves as they come in.
Kids on the beach. The younger one likes playing with kelp whips.
They seem to be able to spend hours running back and forth with the waves.
It is amazingly hard to get a GOOD picture of a black dog. If she’s going to be anything more than a black blob, everything else is washed out and over exposed.
Offspring #2 jumping off a small bluff into the sand.
Flying dog, jumping a small stream flowing into the ocean. She’s got pretty serious springs in her legs.
Offspring #1, wading in the ocean on a 45 degree day.
Another flying dog Pic. Hard to take pictures of, but occasionally I get a really good one.
A sandstorm in the rain. the wind was blowing from the south, and even though it was raining, the wind kicked up enough dry stuff to send it whipping along, close to the ground, so I was getting rained on, sand-blasted, and wind-blown all at once. 
At the Tillamook Air Museum
A P-47D
An A26B Invader
Lots of fun.
Rolf,
Great looking dog! Kids are amazing, 45 degrees and running in water! And I’ve been there on really warm days, that water is cold!
Thanks. Not quite sure what it is about her appearance, but she gets a lot of comments. She’s a keeper. A classic pound-puppy. Picked up as a stray, best guess was about a year old or a bit less, at 37 pounds. They couldn’t place her for a month in the Spokane area, during which she filled out to 47 pounds. After we got her, a month later she was at a sleek 57 pounds. She’s VERY cautions around new people or dogs, but doesn’t bark except to alert us, and she’s got a very serious-sounding WOOF when she alerts. Aside from her tendency to want to herd the kids up by nipping at them, an excellent pup.
Kids are funny – get cold or uncomfortable at the drop of a hat, but will play in all kinds of conditions with nary a word if they are having fun. Have dirt or water or sticks, and the boy-child will get dirty and have fun, just about every time. I remember doing the same when I was a kid, so they come by it honestly.
Okay, that’s all fine and dandy, family-fun-time, yadda yadda yadda…..WHERE’S THE WARBIRD PICS?????
Went up to Portland with the Wife back in Dec of ’07 (plane landed on the tail-end of a massive storm front that boasted 130mph gusts and no power on the coast for the week we were in town). We didn’t get to Tillamook, but we did take a day to drive down to McMinville, home of Evergreen Air Museum, which boasts quite the serious collection of planes, including a P38 (!!!!!!!!) and the one-and-only Spruce Goose (!!!!!!!!!!!). Even the wife was impressed!
Sorry – I’ll stick in a P47 just for you 🙂
I have, in a box, a fair number of Tri-X and Kodachrome shots from the OR coast. Sure would like to spend time there again.
For black objects, in Photoshop Elements or similar:
enhance
brightness/contast
levels
The middle slider is your new friend.
Nice photos under difficult conditions.
Thanks. I just used GIMP to crop and scale them. Not really into post-shoot processing. Just keep trying to get better initial results (and keeping in mind that some things can ONLY be done with multiple frames and post-processing). I’ll look into that, though.