Tag: ocean

Beachside State Park Tuesday Oct 20 to Friday Oct 23

Picasa photolink for this trip

The Oregon coast is beautiful any time of year, although cloudy skies and rain are always a possibility. I (Mo) usually try to spend a few days there in the fall. On Tuesday, October 20, I left (with Abby as my copilot and companion) at 8 am, traveling via Westside Road on the western edge of Recreation Creek and the Upper Klamath Lake National Wildlife Refuge. There was fog all the way from home, along Highway 97 through Chiloquin and Chemult to Highway 58, and over the Cascades. I took a few photos through the windshield of the fog and brilliant colors of turning leaves.

The entire trip only took 5 pleasant hours of driving. At Eugene, I traveled west along Highway 136 to Florence, and then north to Beachside State Park just a bit south of Waldport. When I arrived in the afternoon, temperatures were in the 60’s. In order to camp for 3 consecutive nights, I had to take one of the only five unreserved campsites available. The campground has a total of 33 electrical sites with no sewer or dump. Ten of those sites are right on the beach, but they were filled. I settled in to a site three rows back, but can still hear the ocean and a walk to the beach is “nothing”.

I stayed at the beach until Friday morning. I enjoyed sleeping in until 8am on Wednesday, good for both me and for Abby. My days were spent walking the beach, first toward the north on Wednesday, and then south on Thursday. The beach is long, open, and the sand is packed hard for great walking. There are no shells or rocks, but the waves and birds provide plenty of entertainment.

Wednesday was windy and while cloudy in the morning, ended in the warm 60’s by afternoon. I walked, read, and relaxed. Without the “toad” on this trip, my entertainment was all on foot. We walked the campground in the evening where Abby found a tennis ball. She loves to play fetch and often will find a stray ball on our walks. I enjoyed my evening with a hamburger cooked over the outside wood fire and shared a little with Abby.

On Thursday we again walked the beach where Abby found another ball on the return trip. We checked the USFS Tillicum Beach Campground
along the way. The campground is high on a bluff along the beach, although you could still hear the ocean and there was easy access to the beach. The cost was listed at $28 per night with electricity, but it would only be $14 with the senior pass. I made a tasty skillet breakfast of eggs, potatoes, and sausage upon my return, and then spent some time reading most of my current book. I walked around the campground again in the evening and noticed that many campers had left that day.

By Friday the rain arrived after wonderful weather all week. Got up at 7:30 am and left the park around 11 am. Traveled Highway 101 south to Reedsport, then Highway 38 to Highway 138 and ended up in Sutherland. Passing the elk reserve along 138, I noticed a great many elk in residence. The last time I drove this route there weren’t any elk visible. It rained throughout the entire route until I reached Sutherland. The Seven Feathers Casino is at Sutherland, and I arrived around 2, stopped in for a bit of time, and paid my dues. Traveling south on I-5 to Medford and then over to HWY 140 home, I stopped in at Costco in Medford for inexpensive gasoline before driving over the mountain. I arrived home around 6 pm, with plans to drive to Klamath the next day to take advantage of the available dump station at Moore Park.

I always enjoy the last October MoHo trip before the snow forces me to put her to bed for the winter. Sometimes late fall rains are part of that trip, however this time the weather was perfect and I was grateful for such a wonderful, relaxing trip.

Day 3 Kayaking Sunset Bay

Photos from the coast part of our trip

After a day of driving the coast it was a delight to return to the park and see how protected the bay was from all the wild winds. Even if we couldn’t get out on the slough or the estuary, we decided to launch our boats for an evening run in Sunset Bay.

It was the first time for either of us in ocean water, and those waves may look completely tame in the photos, but in a sit-inside kayak, it was a bit of a rush. After some time, it was a bit less scary, and we ventured out toward the surf, trying to get far enough out to see the lighthouse. The breakers beyond the rocks were big and noisy, and we would paddle toward them, turning around to ride the waves back in. Sometimes it was challenging to turn the boats, and facing a rolling wave sideways is a bit daunting. I found out later that most people choose a sit-on-top type of kayak for ocean waves, and after our little adventure, I can certainly see why. It turned out to be a perfect place for getting used to the feel of the moving ocean, and hopefully when the time comes for kayaking the San Juan Islands we will be a bit more ready. Great way to end a perfect day at the coast.

Day 3 ByWay to Bandon

We love byways and backways. You can find all sorts of information about these amazing beautiful highways on the internet, in fact I even found a national geographic book all about some of the nation’s greatest byways. Today we traveled the Charleston to Bandon byway along the Seven Devils road parallel to the coast, and out to the beach. This loop is part of the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway of Oregon.

The most amazing thing on this trip was the lack of cars and people along the route. The Seven Devils road winds over the hills that are between the South Slough area and the coast, traveling through young forests that were heavily logged about 70 years ago.

We stopped in at the South Slough Estuary interpretive center, hoping for some additional information about the slough. Our original plan was to kayak the slough, but the winds were too strong so we abandoned that plan. The Estuary information center is wonderful, though, with the best large scale aerial photograph I have seen in a long time. It is about 10 feet tall and shows the estuary at low tide. There is a tremendous amount of information about this estuary here, I could have stayed for hours, but we were headed for Bandon, so onward.

When we turned west to the Seven Devils Beach wayside, the winds were blowing hard, but not so much that it explained the completely empty parking lot. The beach is gorgeous, long and sandy, with hard packed sands that you can walk on for miles. Of course, it was windy. I posted a video on YouTube to show just how windy it was. I was still amazed to have that beach all to ourselves during July 4th week. Oregon is still wild and free in so many places, and still uncrowded as well.

We drove on to Bandon, stopping in town for a bit of shopping at Winter Rivers Books, a warm and friendly locally owned bookstore, for an artsy clothing purchase at Siren Song, one of my favorite clothing shops in the west, and some great clam chowder at Tony’s Crab Shack. The wind was still blowing furiously, (didn’t they say something about breezy?) so we decided to drive to the famous beach for photos, but didn’t walk there. Maybe next time. The beach in Bandon is one of the most beautiful on the Oregon coast in my opinion, but most of the times I have been there, the winds have been blowing furiously, often including clouds and rain. The sun was gorgeous today, but the winds still blew.

Day 2 Cape Arago


The road that winds along the coast from Sunset Bay to Cape Arago is part of the Pacific Coast trail. The forests are thick and lush with old growth Douglas-fir, spruce, and hemlock, with huge skunk cabbage plants in the streams. At almost every curve in the road a trail disappears into the forest. Openings in the trees reveal the coast in all its glory, with the only view of the Cape Arago Lighthouse along this road.

The road leads to the Simpson Reef Overlook and views of Shell Island where there are huge sea lions, elephant seals, and harbor seals in a protected world. Again, the trails are good, the signs offer great information about what you are seeing, and the views are fabulous. Gray whales migrate along the coast and are visible here but on this day the winds were whipping up the waves to such an extent that all we could see were whitecaps.

At the end of the road is Cape Arago State Park, with a steep but good trail leading down to the tidepools on the beach. The tide was out when we were there, and there were some green anemones and red seaweeds that were nice. Somewhat appalled at all the dead crabs lying around, and later discovered thanks to another sign posted at Sunset Bay that they weren’t dead crabs at all, but just the shells of crabs who shed their outer husks like snakes. What a relief to find that out.