What happened was, we packed our bags into a little red car
that came from a place called enterprise, and the little red car
went south, south past Portland and
down to the sea. Pretty enterprising. We paused
in Newport, but it wasn’t really Newport, it was down a rutted road where
elk browsed, unbothered by our raised eyebrows, open mouths and clicking shutters.
We were back behind everything, by the slough, wet with rain. After a few days
we traveled on, gathering sights and sounds and smells and
the air of places we’d never been. Cape Perpetua, Yaquina Head, Ocean Dunes,
Humbug Mountain.
Gold Beach, Hunter Creek, Beverley Beach and Brookings. Hiouichi, Stout Grove, Prairie
Creek (now we are in California), Arcata. Eureka, Ferndale.
Ferndale, the slow, friendly, easy little town we came to love.
And there was Willow Creek,
Hawkins Bar, Burnt Ranch.
Yes, it’s a litany, and there’s more:
Weaverville, Junction City, Helena. Horse Mountain, Red Crest,
Myers Flat, Briceland, and Shelter Cove. Shelter Cove, the place of crashing surf, black
sand and triumphant hikers emerging from lost days on the Lost Coast.
Then later, Bald Hills, Patrick Creek, Cave Junction, Grants Pass.
We are back in Oregon now. Corvalis, and Portland. Twelve days and then home,
home to fat inboxes, piles of snail mail, and thousands of pictures to take us back
and carry us
onward.
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The photos (and there will be more!):
- The muddy, pot-holed, hairpin-turned, steep and long road to our airbnb on a slough outside Newport, Oregon. A road that held wonders, once you could relax your grip on the steering wheel.
- A forest of Port Orford cedar trees on Hunter Creek Road outside Gold beach, Oregon, where fellow blogger Gunta of Movin’ On lives.
- This tiny tree frog makes a big noise, but not when he’s in hand; at our Ferndale, California aribnb.
- Lovely, spring-blooming Bleeding hearts (Dicentra formosa) along a quiet back road outside Newport, OR.
- Looking up into the Redwood trees at Redwood National Forest, California.
- The tide’s coming in at Shelter Cove, on California’s Lost Coast. One road in, one road out, and be ready for 45 minutes of winding, steep, rough road.
- A local combing the beach, for what, I don’t know. Beverley Beach, Oregon.
- At Myers Beach in southern Oregon, a sea stack and the distant headlands are reflected in the shimmering water of low tide.
- The black sand at Shelter Cove is mostly smooth black pebbles streaked with white.
- A sea squall rushes towards land at Cape Perpetua, Oregon. It got very cold, very fast that morning.
- A hiker rests and takes in the view at Shelter Cove. It’s the end of a three-day backpacking trip up California’s Lost Coast for this admirable man.
- Shelter Cove residents erected this sign to warn tourists like us about the dangers of their beach. We were careful!
- An old, rusted cleat on a pier in Newport, Oregon, with the town’s iconic 1930’s bridge in the background.
- California sea lions try to get shut-eye on platforms built just for them on the Newport waterfront. Tourists can stroll out onto a short pier and watch all day.
- One of Ferndale’s many pristine Victorian buildings.
- Our little red rental car at Myers Beach, on the southern coast of Oregon.
- Alder trees and ferns line a section of the road to our Newport airbnb.
- The uncommon Brook wakerobin, a diminutive trillium relative, found in southwestern Oregon and northwestern California.
- Redwood trees dwarf the cars on the Avenue of the Giants, in northern California.
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