On our day exploring south, we used a mile-by-mile guide to alert us to the best view-points along the beautiful Oregon coastline. Our first stop was at Arch Rock Point. We had hoped for a beautiful blue sky background. But we see several days of rain in our forecast, so we are sight-seeing in between raindrops.
We can still see Arch Rock, and the stormy weather brings dramatic white-capped ocean waters flooding through the arch.
This coastline is filled with rocky coves. All this rain is keeping the mountains carpeted in green, and the continuous waves make it look like a boiling cauldron in the coves.
Our next stop was Natural Bridge, just a few more miles down the road. There are actually two arches underneath this bridge. It was hard to keep Mark behind the barriers that separated the viewpoint from that bridge.
Many of the sites we will see are on a 12-mile stretch of Samuel Boardman State Park. They are also connected by the "Coast Trail." Instead of driving to individual sites, we could have hiked the twelve miles. In better weather we might have done just that. We did try hiking part of the trail, but it is a muddy mess right now.
We crossed over the Thomas Creek bridge on this stretch of Highway 101. It deserved a picture just because it's the tallest bridge in Oregon. It's 345 feet down to the creek below, and we couldn't even see the bottom.
Our next stop was another great Oregon State Park. This is Harris Beach, and you can see Denisa standing in the middle of those huge boulders that litter the beach. It's hard to tell how big and dramatic these sea stacks are until you get a tiny human figure into the picture with them.
Denisa is standing on the beach, and she's taking a picture of Mark, who's perched on the cliff overlooking Harris Beach.
Some times those little rocks aren't quite tall enough when a bigger wave hits the beach. That ocean water will help to rinse off all the mud we got from trying to hike the coast trail.
As you can see from the pictures, we were the only ones to brave the chilly wet weather to be on the beach today. But there was another figure on the rocks out there with us.
The wildlife picture of the day is this stealthy black oystercatcher. As you can see, he has a tweezer-like beak that is used to catch unsuspecting oysters that aren't tightly closed.
Harris Beach was one of our favorite places to visit this day, and they have a nice campground here as well.
Harris Beach State Park is right outside another neat little seaside town--Brookings, Oregon. We drove through the marina, where most boats are spending this rainy day in port. From talking to the locals, we know they are tired of the number of days of rain they have had, and they are throwing out terms like El Nino to describe the weather patterns. One guy at church mentioned that they've only gotten rain twice this winter--one rain lasted for 35 days, and the other rain was for 40 days.
So we weren't surprised when there was more rain in the forecast for the next day when we planned to explore the section along Highway 101 north of us. We waited until after the morning rain, but the skies were still clouded over as we looked over this cove.
Our drive will take us through Humbug Mountain State Park. At 1,756 feet high, Humbug is the tallest mountain that rises directly out of the ocean. It makes a nice picture as we approached on Highway 101.
Highway 101 then swerves east of Humbug Mountain. So our views suddenly changed from blue ocean to green mountains. It's amazing to think that the ocean is just a half-mile away when it looks like it could be a half-continent away.
We swerved back to the ocean about the time we got to the seaside village of Port Orford. Looking back, we see that Humbug is now shrouded in the clouds.
One of our favorite stops in town was our fish and chips lunch at the Crazy Norwegian Cafe, that was recommended by our campground hosts. Then we headed to the town's port. Instead of sitting in a protected bay, this is the only open water port in Oregon.
It's one of only six "dolly ports" in the world. A dolly port uses those yellow cranes to lift the boats up and down into the water. So fishing boats are lifted down to the ocean in the morning, and then lifted back up at the end of their day of fishing.
We didn't see any boats in the rough water today, so we didn't get to watch the transfer process. But it was interesting to see the boats lined up on dollies with wheels, rather than floating in the water at the dock.
This is definitely a working dock, with crab cages stacked up and waiting for better fishing weather.
Just past the dock is Port Orford Heads State Park. The wind is really picking up, but we're heading that way.
It was trying to rain, but we started the hike around the state park anyway. We got some great views of the secluded beach that lies way below us between the heads.
It was wet and cold, but the views down to the ocean were breath-taking.
This wild iris was enjoying the moisture more than we were this afternoon.
We were hiking through the forest much of the time. But in the open areas we could feel the full force of the wind coming off the Pacific. It was windy enough to knock a big guy sideways.
But have we mentioned that the views from up there in the open were breath-taking? In a way, we thought this hike was more fun because of the extreme wind. But we're a little weird that way.
Despite the weather, we have enjoyed getting to see the towns and beaches of this southern section of the Oregon coast. They are breath-taking no matter what the weather is like. We're hoping for better weather as we head north up the coast, but we have really enjoyed our stay at the town of Gold Beach.
No comments:
Post a Comment