Sand dunes in Oregon??

First of all, who knew that Oregon even had dunes, let alone hundreds of miles of them along the coast, all with sand as pure and white as the Caribbean, some of them 500 feet tall? 

Maybe I live in a bubble (OK not maybe), but despite the fact that Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area was on the itinerary, I just didn’t expect it.  And neither did everyone else, which is really my only justification for almost an entire day playing in the dunes, hiking the dunes, running down them into Cleawox Lake, renting quads and sand rhinos and riding the dunes (you get the idea).  So what if I had to throw out the window perhaps the more educational items that I had previously planned for the Oregon Coast (tide pools, crabbing, glass blowing factory).  We did actually stop at a “famous” skate park  (it has a FULL pipe!); does that count? Really you just can’t quantify the value of life lessons in getting sand out of your teeth after accidentally rolling completely down a sand mountain, and how much throttle it takes to keep from sinking up to your axles in soft sand, right? On that note, our RV technical problems seem to be slowing down – we have only lost power one other time (totally unrelated to the first power problem) and we managed to break our door lock (also not a problem since our kids are one quarter spider monkey and well able to crawl into windows). We did offer a passing nod to the Oregon fishing industry by driving through the wharf in historic Newport - we intended to eat dinner there, but surprisingly, if smelled like fish – and as Kambria said, “you wouldn’t want to eat a hamburger while looking out the window at a cow, would you?” So we found a nice civilized seafood/steakhouse down the road with a gorgeous view of sundown over the Pacific Coast.