At the Museum:
Each year during spring breaks, the Museum focuses on family events. Every day at the Museum will include the ways that kites are used to pull, lift, and signal. And of course, with your admission, you can make a single line kite.

2-Line Kite Lessons on the Beach:
This year, each Saturday there will be someone on the beach, teaching two-line kite flying.

• Saturday, March 20, 2010, 1:00 – 3:30 pm – Sid Snyder Beach Approach
• Saturday, March 27, 2010, 1:00 – 3:30 pm – Sid Snyder Beach Approach
• Saturday, April 3, 2010, 1:00 – 3:30 pm – Sid Snyder Beach Approach
• Saturday, April 10, 2010, 1:00 – 3:30 pm – Sid Snyder Beach Approach

Bringing your own two-line kite is recommended. The class, which includes instructor presentation, individual coaching and practice time, lasts about an hour. Kites may be purchased at the Museum gift shop or from local kite shops.

15th Annual Quilt Show
sponsored by the Peninusula Quilt Guild
Admission is Free

Title of the Show: Quilting at the Beach

Days: March 19, 20 and 21, 2010

Hours: 10:00 am to 4:00 pm Friday and Saturday, 12:00 to 4:00 Sundays

Place: Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum , 115 SE Lake, Ilwaco, WA

• Over 100 quilts will be on display created by members of the guild. 61 members form Washington, Oregon and California with varied creativity and expertise.
• Food will be available – Lions Club from Ocean Park.
• There will be a display of quilt related creations made by the members.
• Quilting demonstrations will be going on throughout the three days.
• Sunday afternoon drawing will take place for the raffle quilt, ‘Oh My Stars’. Proceeds raised from the sale of the tickets is given to various organizations on the peninsula and Pacific County.

…miles of Pacific Ocean view beaches and two lighthouses at the mouth of the Columbia river make this one of the finest Washington State Parks. This area is rich in history, and the price is right. Visitors can support local history preservation efforts (and learn something too) by visiting the Lewis and Clark interpretive center and the North Head lighthouse for less than five dollars. Combine this visit with a winter weekend of storm watching on the long-beach peninsula and you’ll never want to go home.

We left Seattle and are driving down to Cape Disappointment, which is at the mouth of the Columbia River. This is where Lewis and Clark ended their voyage of discovery and first saw the Pacific Ocean. This is also our first trip to the west coast and we too are eager to see the pacific Ocean.

Traveling with us is our 30-foot Airstream trailer named Chummy and our trusted Garmin GPS named Dora. Pulling the trailer and being led by Dora is our yet to be named Ford E350 van.

Our original plan was to leave Seattle and drive directly to the coast and follow that down to Cape Disappointment. However, we were given some excellent local advice concerning the Washington coast. We decided to allow Dora to give us the quick route. Her route took us through Olympia, the capital of Washington, and then out to the coast.

The local advice was that the Washington coast highway would not give us many views of the ocean and we found it to be correct, at least along this stretch we were driving. When we were close enough to see the ocean, it was blocked by buildings but most of the time we were not close enough to even get a view. The ride was pretty, though and we also made excellent time arriving in Ilwaco in the early afternoon.

Read Kent Hadley’s article on associatedcontent.com.

There’s plenty to discover for hikers and cyclists on the Discovery Trail, the 10-to 12-foot-wide path that connects Long Beach to Ilwaco on Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula.

Most of the 8.5-mile trail through the dunes has been in use for a number of years, but it wasn’t formally dedicated until September.

The last pavement, except for a quarter-mile section, was laid this summer at Seaview and on the outskirts of Ilwaco. A steep, unpaved section in Cape Disappointment State Park is surfaced with packed and rolled gravel to deter skateboarders.

Read the full story at The Oregonian, where you’ll also find some wonderful photos of the trail and the fresnel lens in the North Head Lighthouse.

“The City of Long Beach, a popular Washington beach town, is making it easier than ever for visitors to learn about its points of interest.

Thanks to a new technology called QR codes — a type of barcode that can be scanned by an iPhone, Blackberry, Droid or other type of smart phone — clients have instant access to information at 29 points of interest around the town.

Small signs with the codes provide details on such visitor draws as the World’s Longest Beach arch, the world’s largest frying pan, the World Kite Museum and Hall of Fame, a gray whale skeleton and a 20-foot tall bronze evergreen known as Clark’s Tree, among others. Many sites are located along the half-mile boardwalk overlooking the ocean, in city parks and along Discovery Trail, an 8.5-mile paved, coastal, interpretive path.”

Read the full story.

We had a great trip down to Long Beach Washington for most of our Spring Break. On our drive down we drove through every kind of weather, sunny, then rainy, then snowy, then back to sunny, it was pretty crazy. We stayed for three nights at a little 9 room bed and breakfast that was literally ten feet from the beach. It had a jacuzzi tub, fireplace, patio and delicious scones, yogurt, fruit and juice for breakfast. I would highly recommend it if anyone wants a nice getaway but maybe just in low season, it’s a little pricey during summer.

Anyways, we took our time getting there, stopping by the outlet malls on the way so we got there in the evening. We explored the beach for a bit and then went to a pizza place that looked like an old tavern and when we asked for our leftovers to be boxed up they gave us a piece of tin foil. You know you’re in a small town when they give you tin foil to wrap up your leftovers.

The next day it was rainy and windy so we decided to just relax in our room for most the day. We did get out and got some salt water taffy from the Marsh’s Free Museum where we also saw this creepy “Jake the Alligator Man” which is supposedly half man, half alligator. They had many other weird things in this museum like a two-headed calf and strange old coin machines.

We had lunch at a little family restaurant where I had the best clam chowder I’ve ever had. The rest of the day we read, napped, watched DVDs and just relaxed.

The last full day we had some sunshine so we headed south and checked out the State Parks along the way that had some trailslighthouses and beaches to see. We found a cool little cove where the waves would crash against the rocks and have a little entrance into the cove and would fill it up if they came in at the right spot. That was probably one of our favorite spots that we found.

After eating lunch beside a beach called Waikiki beach we drove to Astoria, Oregon. We walked around the town for a little bit, had some drinks in a cool coffee shop and then tried to find the house where The Goonies was filmed but we couldn’t find it.

When we were coming back to our place we drove along the beach to get there. This was another highlight, there were a whole bunch of entrances where you could just go out on the beach with your car and drive down the beach for quite a while.

That night we had some great pasta dishes at a restaurant right beside our place. The day we left we stopped by more shopping places and got some baseball gear and stuff for the house. It was a very relaxing trip and definitely worth the 6 hour drive to get there.

Read the blog.