Oregon’s Central Coast

Wow, what a day! The coastline here is spectacular. We ended up spending the entire day within about 10 miles of where we started this morning.

 

It began with complimentary breakfast at our hotel. We’ve eaten those standard, boring breakfasts many times, so it came as a shock to find a chef making personalized omelets, among other things . . . at a Best Western!

 

 

Once we got on the road, we came across a little place called Bob Creek Wayside, so we had to stop, of course.

It was a beautiful little beach, and it’s where Bob Creek emptied into the ocean.

Another short drive down the road took us to Cape Perpetua. What a place! It’s a feast for the senses. We ended up spending the rest of the day exploring this mile of coastline. Here’s an overview of what we saw:

From the visitor’s center (it’s the building just off the road in the middle of the picture), we hiked about a mile to what’s marked as “Devil’s Horn” on the photo. It’s actually called Spouting Horn, but I obviously had a mental lapse when I labeled the photo!  It’s hard to see the trails in the picture, but it was quite a hike. We also spend some time watching Thor’s Well fill, over flow violently, then fill again. I’m going to add a video I took of the waves crashing up the 20-30 foot chasms in the rocks. The water rushed in and exploded upward when it hit the top of the chasms. This area is labeled in green on the photo.

Since it was still high tide, we headed over the Devil’s Churn. There, the chasm is bigger and the amount of water swirling into it is enormous. I don’t think any of my pictures adequately convey the enormity of it all.

Here are the picture that go with all these places:

A view of the tide pools from the trail that lead to Spouting Horn and Thor’s Well.

A view of the trail. It was like this from the visitor’s center to the tunnel under the roadway. After that, it was all coastal views.

The CCC did quite a bit of work in this area in the 1930s. This is the site of one of camps. It’s overgrown with trees and dense vegetation now, but back then it was a camp with many buildings. Here’s the foundation for one of the bunkhouses.

One of the chasms several chasms we saw along the way.

More of the trail.

Here’s what happens in the chasms at high tide–the waves rush in and explode upward when they hit the top.

Here, the wave is breaking agains the top of the chasm, but it is also flowing into a small cave under the water level and exploding upward through a hole in the rock. This is Spouting Horn.

Another view of Spouting Horn.

Some selfies work better than others. 🙂

More of the trails that lead to all these various places. Many of them date back to the work of the CCC in the 1930s.

This is the entrance to Devil’s Churn, the biggest chasm.

An aerial view of Devil’s Churn. You can see the trail that leads down to it. It was pretty steep.

We also went to the view point at the top of the cliffs. At 800 feet above sea level, it’s the highest point on the Oregon coast. (It’s where I took the pictures with the arrows explaining where everything is.) There we found an old stone cabin left the by the CCC. While there, we looked down into the ocean and saw a gray whale and her calf. They looked so much tinier than I expected. Mama is usually about 45 feet long, and the calf was 20 feet when it was born. I’ll put up a video I took of them surfacing in the waves.

For lunch, we headed into Yachts (pronounced Ya-HOTS) and found the Driftwood Inn. I have to say, we’ve found some interesting food on this trip, including this lunch. I ordered Pad Thai and instead of the peanut-flavored goodness I expected, the flavoring was coconut based. It was so different and incredibly delicious.

The other night in Coos Bay we ate at the Blue Heron, a German restaurant that also specialize in seafood. Bob and I split the Beef Stroganoff and it was so refreshingly different. Normally that dish is pretty heavy, and so was this one, but it was flavored with lemon which made it lighter. Really, really good.

Okay, back to the day. After lunch we explored the tide pools. The rocks were very rough and difficult to walk on, so we didn’t get far. I hoped to see sea urchins and starfish, but we had to settle for tiny crabs, tadpoles, and lots of algae and sea weed.

It’s hard to see, but these rocks are killer to walk on. Too uneven and rough to find a foot hold.

Overall today, our Apple devices tell us we walked about 4.5 miles and the equivalent of 37 floors of climbing. We’ve been hitting our 10,000 steps almost every day of this vacation, so far.

Finally, it was time to head to our hotel for the night–the B&B at the lightkeeper’s cottage at Heceta Lighthouse. It was an interesting experience but I’ll tell you all about it in tomorrow’s post. 🙂