Oregon - Day 11 - up the coast to Newport, Cape Lookout

Cape Lookout State Park, near Netarts

Wednesday, 11 May 2022

I meant to post a couple of photos I took at Washburne State Park of the moss growing on trees there.

I can't decide which of these show the moss most clearly, so I'm posting both.  This particular time was sunny, as you can see, but it often wasn't while we were there, and I kept thinking of the Longfellow poem that I still remember some of from when we had to memorize it in school back in prehistoric times.

        "This is the forest primeval.  The murmuring pines and the hemlocks

        bearded in moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

        stand like Druids of eld . . ."

And that's all I can remember.  Growing up in the south, I thought the moss he was talking about was Spanish moss.  But I think now it was moss like this stuff.

When we left the campground this morning, we went across the street to the ocean, where I wouldn't take the dogs before on account of worrying about traffic on US-101.  There's a small parking area and a few paths that lead to the beach through thick bushes and trees.  Some critters live there, and I saw a very dark brown rabbit eating grass, before he saw us and ran off.

I was surprised to find that the pretty pink
flowers belonged to this pine-type tree.

A wild rhododendron just starting
to bloom for the year.

This is a path, believe it or not, leading from
the parking area down to the beach.

A path closer to the beach
that was too soggy for me.

Oregon's view of the Pacific Ocean.

today's route

We drove a little less than 100 miles today, but stretched out along the coast, it looks much longer.  And it seemed longer if you count all the s-curves packed into that distance, many with warning signs to take them at 25 or 30 mph.

As you can see, the road went right along the coast, and when I saw warning signs for elk (these just said "ELK" instead of showing a picture as usual), I wondered where they'd go.  There didn't seem to be a lot of room that wasn't a cliff up or down.

I passed dozens of vacation rentals and B&Bs - apparently a very popular area for tourists.

I passed the visitor center for Cape Perpetua and would have stopped but it didn't look accessible for us.  Still, the Wikipedia page is interesting,  https://en.wikipedia.org/Cape-Perpetua and it shows photos of both the Devil's Churn and Thor's Well, which I'd passed signs for.  Pretty impressive natural sites.

We came to Yachats, "Gem of the Oregon Coast," they say, and I believe it.  It was a charming town.  Lots of public art.  Lots of motels large and small. Galleries and eating places.  Looking geared for tourists, but it was a real town as I saw a store that sold kitchen tools and an assisted living place.

I pulled over for a Porsche, and the driver actually thanked me.

Waldport, "Where the Forest Meets the Sea," sits on Alsea Bay.

Alsea Bay Bridge

It's more than 3,000' long.  Note again that I'm getting better at crossing bridges.  I get on an inside lane and ignore the possibility that I'm holding up faster traffic and focus on just getting across.  That's been working pretty well.

To the left of this bridge photo, I could see where the bay was opening up to the ocean, and I saw a couple of folks in a skiff working out there.  It took me longer than it should have to realize they were setnetters.

This photo isn't clear enough to see any detail, and I'm including it only for my own memory.  I watched setnet operations the entire 15 years I lived in Alaska and can't believe it took me several minutes to realize that's what I was looking at here.  It's when someone strings a gillnet out into a body of water - in Alaska they were always anchored on shore at one end and the other had a buoy on it and it drifted around with the tide.  Fish would get entangled in the net, the fishers would go out in a skiff and haul the net on board a bit at a time, clearing the fish out of it and then dropping the net back in the water to keep working.

That area the skiff was in looked like a natural harbor with arms coming out from land to the left of that skiff photo, and from the opposite shore I was on when I took this photo.  They didn't meet - there was plenty of room to get out to the ocean - but I'm sure it protected the town from the worst of the storm surges.

At Seal Rock, the tiny town, I saw a business called Good Mood Food and a sign saying Saturday's special: chicken pot pie.  If it hadn't been the middle of the morning, I'd've been willing to stop.

And at Seal Rock, the actual rocks just off-shore, I saw a variety of birds that I couldn't identify while I was driving but decided not to stop.

And then on to Newport, "Explore the Friendliest," their sign said (I think they should give a little more thought to their slogan).  Newport, too, has a bay bridge:

Yaquina Bay bridge

This bridge is 3,200' long and was designed by the same man who designed the bridge at North Bend.  In this photo, that I took off the internet, you can see part of the marina in town.  Newport is well known as a commercial fishing port, and as soon as I crossed the bridge, I turned right to drive along Bay Street, past much of the town's fishing industry.

I had nearly an hour before the restaurant I wanted would open, so I followed the signs to "Public Parking."

Public Parking

Can you tell how impossibly steep this road is?  All those cars you see were parked at a slant, and all were on the most level parts of this area.  I was at the dead-end top of this little drive, wondering whose bright idea this had been.  It was clearly not possible for us to stay here longer than the time it took me to turn around and take this photo.  It's a little hard to tell, because when I lightened the photo enough to show this street area the water in the harbor got the color washed out, but the street ends at the water's edge.

I was aiming for Mo's, established in 1946, and claiming to have famous chowder.  I couldn't park at the curb so I found a spot nearby that may or may not have been available to the public - it was next to a lot clearly labeled for a very small market only.  Anyway, I parked there and found a wifi signal (my first in 3 days) and sent some emails and searched for laundromats along my way.

a bowl of Mo's chowder

That bowl may not look like much, but it was plenty for me for 2 meals.  And it was good chowder, made a lot like my New England momma made chowder.  It looks a little greasy in that photo, but I think that was just the bacon in it - it didn't taste greasy at all.  I was glad we'd stopped.

Across the street was a Pacific Seafood surimi plant (surimi is what's used in fake crab and so forth).  Lots of fishing businesses, lots of people wearing commercial fishing-type clothes.  It really took me back.  I almost went into a marine supply store out of nostalgia, but I have the same problem with those that I have with hardware stores - I always want to buy something.  

From there I drove farther down the road passing rows and rows of fishing boats - one with a sign proclaiming "Fresh Crab."  I saw hundreds of crab pots. 

As I was driving out of town, I passed a florist with the sign "Think Out Side - No Box Required."

I should mention that driving into town, I'd caught a glimpse of Haystack, a famous landmark.  This is an internet photo.

Haystack, near Newport

When I tried to find information about it, I discovered that this isn't the only one.  This website has information about both, including not only what we see now but how they got formed (lava, of course).   https://beachconnection.net/haystacks  And some pretty gorgeous photos.

I'd been noticing occasional blue lines across the road, and in Newport I was finally able to read the writing by them: "Leaving Tsunami Zone."  I guess writing in the road is cheaper than signs?

I was afraid to take the dogs out near the docks, figuring they'd both eat whatever offal from the fish they could find, so we stopped at a local park near the beach to take a walk.  There were several other dogs there as well, which cut our walk a little short.  I saw down on the beach that the wet sand must have been quite firm, because someone was pushing one of those jogging baby carriages and a couple of others were riding bicycles along the beach.

In the distance I could see the Yaquina Head Lighthouse, another much-photographed image.

You can just make out the white lighthouse on the point.

Back on the road, I came to the first "Bump" sign I'd seen in Oregon.  And I discovered that here, they actually mean there's a bump I should slow down for.

We went through a series of small towns: Newkowin; Oreton; Pacific City (where the other Haystack is - I couldn't see it because of offshore fog); Cloverdale ("In the Heart of the Nestucca Valley").

I saw several cherry stands along the road with boxes of cherries for sale.  I'd've bought some too if I could have seen the stands coming in time to stop.

Coming toward us, we passed 9 bikers with a small car caught in the middle of the pack.

At Hebo I was lucky to see a pink triple whammy: an azalea, a rhododendron and a tulip magnolia, all blooming like crazy, all growing right next to each other.  Really pretty.

I heard on the radio that there've been increased bear sightings around Oregon.

Once I'd turned on Cape Lookout Road, I saw a sea of sand on both sides.  That road was 6 miles of terrible potholes, and I kept wondering if I'd have to drive this same road when we leave in the morning, too.

The campground was just on the other side of a 6' high sand dune from the ocean - there were walkways that let people cross the dune.  Unfortunately, it started to rain just as we got there, and that kept up intermittently for the rest of the evening, so I wasn't in the mood to take the dogs to the beach.  Actually, I don't even know if they'd be allowed.  Next trip I'll find out.

At our campsite, my electrical outlet had some kind of screwy problem that my surge protector alerted me to, so the camp hosts moved me to another site - not as good a location as the first one, but it at least had power going to it.  I was glad all over again I'd gotten that surge protector.  Its display read "Open Ground" and it wouldn't allow power to go to the RV.  An open ground didn't sound good anyway, let alone when it was raining.

The camp hosts told me at one campground they'd been in, there was a power surge so strong it fried both the power source and the surge protector.  Just fried them, they said.  But their surge protector did its job and their RV was fine.  None of its systems had any problems because the surge protector stopped them.  And because the surge protector had a warranty, the company sent them a new one.  I didn't think to ask them what brand they were using, though I'm pretty sure mine has a warranty too.

This campground seemed to be a favorite with Stellar's Jay and Red-winged Blackbirds - we saw lots of them.