Marnie, speak! Good girl.

Darwin may have turned three any time in the past few months. We have an arbitrary date on our calendars that we've marked as his birthday and last week was it. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get out to the coast, so we did the next best thing and made an extra special birthday dinner for everyone.

All of Darwin's captions would read, "om nom nom nom nom"

Ok, there's a chance this was considered a huge improvement on going to the beach. The jury is still out.

We did manage to get to the coast yesterday, though. It's been since July which is far too long for this pack of hooligans.

Chop, chop, humans. Get with the letting us out!

We headed on over to Ecola State Park which is beautiful, but a little too crowded for us, during the summer months. Now that school is back in session, we can take advantage of our free fridays to get the trails mostly for ourselves. For you history buffs, Clatsop Loop Trail is part of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. You can find out more about it here.

This trail isn't long but in its 1.5 miles (plus the additional mile or so we went towards Tilamook Head Viewpoint), it rises something like 1000 feet above sea level. On a nice clear and maintained trail, it's a good workout, just ask Darwin, who carried our water in backpack. I can only imagine how much more of a workout it was for those exploring it in its rougher state.

If you keep your eyes peeled, you'll see a lot in these forests. We've come across elk before and you know there will always be a slug or twenty.

But what had to be the weirdest/coolest thing we saw were the hydnellum packii.

Are you looking at that business?

I'm not sure that the birthday boy cared much about the flora and fauna of the pacific northwest sitka forests, but he did sleep the entire trip home. That's a pretty good sign with a three-year old herding dog. He's been a handful of a dog, for the short time we've had him, and I think that's made him all the more endearing. A big happy birthday to my sweet little beast.

Sleepy puppies headed home