What happened was that we packed our bags into a little red car
that we rented 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 unphased by our open mouths and clicking shutters.
The rutted road was back behind everything,
by a 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 seen: Cape Perpetua,
Yaquina Head,
Humbug Mountain.
Gold Beach, Beverley Beach, Hiouichi. Stout Grove and
Prairie Creek (now we are in California).
Arcata. Eureka, Ferndale.
Ferndale, the slow, friendly, easy little town we came to love.
Then Willow Creek, Hawkins Bar, and Burnt Ranch as we headed east into the mountains.
Yes, it’s a litany, and there’s more:
Weaverville, Helena. Horse Mountain, Red Crest.
Myers Flat, Briceland, Shelter Cove. Shelter Cove, the place of crashing surf, black sand,
and triumphant hikers emerging from lost days on the Lost Coast.
When it was time to head north again there was Bald Hills, Patrick Creek, and Cave Junction.
We’re back in Oregon now: Corvalis, Portland. Then Washington, a blur of highway,
and 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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