Exit Ahead

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Heavy, gray clouds obscure the bright blue sky above, but it’s a better view than we were experiencing the first hour of driving south when all was black. Our first photographic pullout is the Winema Lake Viewpoint in Neskowin. When the roads are wet, narrow, and winding, and the sky is dark, the path feels precarious and is only made more so by those who race up behind us, familiar with its contours and obviously annoyed at the person impeding their move forward. I’d like to claim that we were driving slowly to savor our dwindling time out here on the coast, but it was dark, and in any case, we intended to leave in the dark as we’d covered this part of the coast yesterday. Now it’s time to really slow down and take things in, even if the people behind me are shaking their fists in a futile effort to get me to step on the gas.

Dreams awaken soon with our first pitstop at a discreet corner, where we find this sign leading us to a part of a trail we’ve not hiked yet. I’m posting this as a hopeful reminder that while we’ve hiked the other end of the trail at Cascade Head, we’ve not walked this 3.7-mile (6 km) rainforest trail. Something new already for next time.

I must admit a bias while on Highway 101 driving north or south: what is on the west side of the car holds the most interest for me. On the west side of the car, the giant Pacific Ocean is to be found. On the east side of the car are more homes, businesses, forests, lakes, rivers, and boring stuff. Well, until Caroline spots this sign for the Darlingtonia Wayside. First of all, a wayside is nothing like a State Park and is certainly 1,000 miles away from being something similar to a National Park; it is a lowly wayside. Except, this wayside is a spectacular one because it has an enchanting forest trail over to this Darlingtona thing it is pulling our attention into…even if it is on the east side of the road.

Witness the cobra lily, aka the Darlingtonia. Then, like a cobra striking its victim, engaging in further research on my quest to learn more about this plant, I find that the location has a new designation not yet reflected in the signage of the wayside. It is now all grown up and has become the Darlingtonia State Natural Site. I stand corrected about the meek value of this place and am in awe of the mighty Darlingtonia plant.

I think I heard them murmuring, “Nom nom nom” as we stood on the platform overlooking them: they are meat-eaters. Maybe they eat insects, maybe they eat flesh? I asked Caroline to climb over the banister for a closer look and see if they had a nice scent, but she refused. Maybe she knew what evil might lurk in my cold heart?

This is familiar, yet not, and that’s because we are not looking at the boat dock that I’ve photographed dozens of times already. We are looking north on the Umpqua River in Gardiner.

During this late fall Oregon road trip, we learned early on about the pleasures of our seat warmers. Having them in Arizona seemed like a weird indulgence when we bought the car back in December 2018, and last year’s trip up here was had when we were still flying places so our own car wasn’t present. This brings me to another luxury we eschewed in our old Prius: the maps on the dash screen. This time around, we’ve grown somewhat accustomed to looking at the maps instead of purely relying on our phones and this has proven to have great utility. By zooming in on the map so that it moves along with our driving, we are able to spot small side roads that don’t appear in a wider overview of the route. Seeing those small roads approach, we can move around on the map to see if there’s a connection to our highway further ahead or if we’ll have to turn around. This road pictured is called Wildwood Drive and winds its way along the 101 for about 2 miles. It’s a beautiful little path in the woods south of Reedsport.

The next small road led to Saunders Lake and brought us to a fork in the road that, while a dead end, we decided to drive in any way just to see what was out along it. Houses and cabins were about it.

And this old train track that’s grown over and rusting.

Arriving in North Bend, we are now 188 miles (302 km) south of where we woke this morning and more than halfway down the state of Oregon.

A few minutes later, we seamlessly merge into Coos Bay, the largest city along the coast with a population of 16,415 (I think I shared this last year, too), but we are not sticking around long. The yarn store Caroline wanted to visit is closed, though it’s supposed to be open, and then on the way out of town, she spots a burger spot that she says we’ve enjoyed before. Lunch was had at the Shake N Burger, and sure enough, upon getting home, Google’s timeline showed me that we last visited the place on November 25, 2019. I may not share it a lot here, but Caroline’s memory is impeccable; it’s a trap where nothing escapes, except where she just set something down a few minutes before.

Bandon has one of the greatest rocky coastlines in all of Oregon. It’s no wonder that this place has taken on a kind of luxury vibe akin to Cannon Beach, 231 miles north.

Sure, we’d like to live here in retirement, but you’d have to be a millionaire these days to put roots down in Bandon. In November, the average sale price of a home in this area was $422,000, which, with utilities, insurance, and maintenance, is going to cost about $2,100 a month, while rents are not that much lower. Fortunately for those wealthy enough to call this place home, they have a workforce of nearly 30,000 in the area just north from which they can pull in labor.

Horseback rides at sunset among the monoliths are one of the amenities of life on this corner of the southern end of the coast. I shouldn’t be too whistful as at least Bandon hasn’t turned into the famous 17-mile Drive in Carmel By The Sea that charges people for the right to pass through.

The tide is seriously low today, offering us a great look at rocks we’ve not been able to see before.

More evidence of our mad-dash race to collect more experiences here on our last day on the coast.

By now you should see the attraction of what has drawn so many people to Bandon. Besides the cold, blustery days of winter, there’s the issue of heavy fog in the summer, but by and large, the coast of Oregon is our dream climate. It’s probably a good thing we’ll not be making this home as it can forever remain the fairy tale place where, for a week or two a year, everything is perfect.

I’m pretty certain we’ve seen this witch’s claw of rock before, but I can’t be certain. Maybe part of it broke off in between visits and it is only now this shape? Out of curiosity, I searched Lightroom for all photos that have been tagged “Oregon,” though I can’t be sure I’ve done the best job tagging them, and I see that I have 19,623 images to look through to make an accurate determination if this has already been seen. Well, today, it is one more detail to throw in the grab bag of blogged-about memories, hoping that it might be part of the magic key so that when I look at these images again in some years, the whole picture of where we’ve been and what we’ve done will all snap into focus.

Or maybe it’ll be this reminder from Port Orford, only 62 miles from the exit from Oregon, that will produce the sigh of satisfaction that during our time here, we succeeded in seeing all the major sights during all weather conditions and variations in lighting. There’s a thought of hanging out until sunset right here, but that’s an hour away, which leaves enough time to drive another 35 miles south to capture the sun dipping below the horizon at Meyers Creek Beach near Gold Beach, where our vacation of Remote Self-Isolation began 16 days ago.

The shark tooth towers over the sand. This prehistoric fossil of an ancient predator remains as a reminder of the giants that once ruled the earth.

Denial is a powerful tool for remaining delusional about reality. I look at the two people in this selfie, and I know that one is approaching 60 years old and the other in her mid-50s, but I can’t help but know that their inner children are still looking out, albeit with some sense of maturity and a small amount of knowledge. Someday, we’ll likely feel old and tired; it seems to be the way of people, although there are those who just up and die, forever content that they were living with vigor until they never woke again. By the way, I know I’m an irrational romantic and that life and death are a lot messier than I choose to see them, but with time short for all things indulgent, I believe I can allow myself the opportunities when they arise to seize perfection and go with it.

As we were walking around the base of the shark tooth and the surf pulled way out, Caroline was able to pass between it and another large rock jutting out of the sand. In the golden radiance of our setting sun, her silhouette walking through the temporary passage struck me as one of those moments of perfection where I can see her in a light that will frame her in just this way but once in my lifetime. While this is true regarding every photo I’ve ever taken of her, this adds to those treasured images of her riding the bow of a dory in the Grand Canyon, camping in the wilds of the Yukon, snowshoeing in Yellowstone, and smiling at me in her jammies while knitting a pair of socks for me late one night in a yurt just up the coast.

While the low tide is great for us who find it endearing to walk amongst the sea life that should be underwater, these barnacles might be looking forward to the return of their natural environment that has temporarily disappeared. I try imagining what it would be like if, on occasion, the air was pulled off the earth for a few hours, and we’d have to hold our breath and wait for its return. Come to think about it, I already feel this way about far too many people’s intelligence, it was pulled away and is yet to return.

Linger to see it all. Walk around to capture every angle. The view from one location is not the same as from another.

This small crack consumed the sun. We can attest to the truth of this as we were on hand to witness it fall in. How it will find its way back to us tomorrow is one of life’s mysteries. Without the benefit of our nearby star, we drove south to California finding shelter along the sea, but our hearts still walk in dreams along the beaches of Oregon.

Nature is Love

JWise Photo of the Day, Thoughts, Travels

Manzanita Beach in Oregon

There’s so much to see on this coast and so many things we’ve seen before, but even more remains elusive. We return again and again and are never really certain about the deeper quality of things we try to study, but our curiosity brings us back in the hopes of finding the key to the mystery we are trying to comprehend. There are many pieces competing for our attention as we are torn between sky, sea, creatures, plants, sounds, weather, smells, and the myriad of sensual pleasures that caress senses hungry to explore the unknown. We never really gain familiarity.

Caroline Wise and John Wise on Manzanita Beach in Oregon

What is it about familiarity that dulls that desire? We live in an amazing place in its own right, the Sonoran Desert, and yet we don’t wander with the same intensity as we do when outside our ordinary. I say this, but do I really believe it? We are charmed by the birds, cactus, lizards, smell of the wet desert, thunderstorms, arid wide open spaces, exposed jagged rocks, and the bursts of color that come and go. Maybe it’s the barbaric state of the metropolis we live in, with its labyrinth of cinder block fences isolating angry and pretentious people. How does money sterilize a place to remove the free flow of happiness and joy? To explore an environment unencumbered by a grim understanding of the meaninglessness of its inhabitants is a luxury, and so, visiting places we are unfamiliar with gains precious bandwidth within our sense organs to absorb it all. Being an outsider has its advantages.

Manzanita Beach in Oregon

Our lives are too short to have them intertwined with the nonsense of others who are selling you their meaning or, worse, their appearance. Allowing one’s self to dive deeper within is hampered by the superficial curiosity of other people’s dramas, politics, and celebrity. The famous become the worst exemplars of this parasitic culture: The more we are interested in them, the richer and more powerful they become. They continually strive to draw the spotlight on themselves with ever more absurd acts of intellectual barbarity. While not on par with the spectacle of the Roman Circus with fights to the death, the modern gladiators battle one another, producing madness in the audience.

Manzanita Beach in Oregon

Trees, mushrooms, newts, and crashing waves will not enrage you. Lichen, billowy clouds, raindrops, and grand vistas only cost you time to fall in love with them, allowing you to revel in what they might mean to you. Never will you need to raise a fist at the vibrancy of moss-draped over rocks and on the branches of trees. Nature, in some ways, is free, and it’s always unbiased. We humans with our egos are afraid we are missing out on something amongst ourselves because we’ve been conditioned to desire wealth and fame. Knowledge from witnessing the natural world cannot become personal wealth as the age of Humboldt is dead. Instead of feeding the mind and imagination, we yearn for adoration as we strive to do something that will have us recognized. This is not being human; it is being a shallow facade that places us in the insect kingdom or worse.

Manzanita Beach in Oregon

What does it mean to enrich our sense of wonder by walking along the ocean, watching the light change over and over again as clouds and the sun compete for our attention? The jellyfish on the shore is a corpse when we encounter it, but we can imagine it floating effortlessly in the current while it was still alive. The grasses up on the dunes might be invasive, but they look soft and warm to our eyes as they gently outline the contours of the land. These visions of beauty join a wealth of gathered knowledge and memories. They are the currency of venturing out and exploring. I should point out that this form of cash is also collected when going within because books, too, bring us into our imagination and help paint the way we see the world around us.

Manzanita Beach in Oregon

These pieces of nature make a composite whole, the scale of which only grows larger the more we see of it. Try to reconcile just a fraction of what you might see in a lifetime, and you’ll be hardpressed to understand the tiniest of elements, their relationships lost in infinite connections. Trying to understand the atoms in the universe, how each of them relates to others, and what roles they play in every molecule they belong to is a fool’s task, so it is trying to comprehend this 338 miles (544km) of Oregon coastline. And yet, we keep returning, trying to figure out something profound. What our intentions really are, we cannot easily explain.

Manzanita Beach in Oregon

We are running out of time up here, and as usual, we will make a last-minute race to points along the way, thinking that if we could just pull those things together in some comprehensive manner, they would succinctly give us the keys to the universe and we could start to focus on something else. Maybe our investment with so much time up here is giving us some familiarity, but deep understanding will always remain elusive as our quest is too far beyond our grasp to ever satisfy this yearning.

Manzanita Beach in Oregon

Today should be the day when I concede defeat that I might ever know Nature. But if I cannot know Nature, how might I ever truly know my place in it? Are we wasting our precious lives chasing the dreams others place in our heads so they might live their own dreams of having it all? The newt gives me nothing in return for my appreciation. On the contrary, it gives me everything that is intangibly unimportant in our current world. The same goes for the rest of my life I witness on these all-too-brief journeys into coastal Oregon. Yet I leave far wealthier and happier for having shared this time within this massive ecosystem of love. I’m claiming it is love, as I derive as much joy from it as I do in the most romantically intense moments with my wife.

Nehalem River in Oregon

So, when we are outside of Nature, are we outside of love? Of course, we are never truly outside of Nature in the literal sense, but we are in the intellectual constructs of a media-driven circus that has monopolized far too many people’s identities and souls. In this sense, we are in our own simulation or, let’s say, the simulation of creators and capitalists. Ask yourself, who really built the filters of how you perceive your world? Do you dare challenge your role, your god, your career, your biases, or what entertains you?

Nedonna Beach between Rockaway Beach and Nehalem Bay, Oregon

I know the discomfort of challenging all of those things, and it comes with a good dose of isolation. Ask any nerd who grapples with identity and self-perception how difficult this pandemic-induced self-isolation is, and by and large, I’m certain they will tell you the same thing, “I’ve been living like this most of my life.” It’s not that we ever wanted isolated lives, but we’ve been outside the embrace of love for so long that sooner or later, we must accept our role. Not only did our peers find us different, likely due to our abundance of extraordinary curiosity, but our parents, too, felt alienated from the child they found bookish, eccentric, gay, tomboyish, peculiar, or seemingly uncomfortable with themselves since their interests were their own instead of their parents. We grew up without the confidence that love brings to people.

Nedonna Beach between Rockaway Beach and Nehalem Bay, Oregon

I suppose my impossible goal while in the wilds of nature is to see more of more, to hear all that is unheard in the silence, and to find the scents beyond the capability of my nose. That, by my definition, is love; it is intimacy. If we are lucky in life, we might find that partner who also cherishes the quiet moments of soft touch, delicate smells, and the sounds of heartbeats and breaths. In a sense, this is what I’m looking for in my relationship with the outside world. In our close and personal moments, when love is dictating the soft passion of being lost in discovery, we find our most magnificent time of being mindless and largely outside of thought. If we are thinking about work, politics, sports, rumors, or the heavy drama of a TV show, we will not find ourselves caressing the shoulder, neck, or arm of our loved ones, lingering timelessly while locked in a reassuring embrace.

Nedonna Beach between Rockaway Beach and Nehalem Bay, Oregon

When we race to have it all, neither we nor our partners are quite satisfied. It is the same in Nature. We cannot arrive, see, and have conquered the place. Seeking the relationship of love, we’ll want to know more. We’ll have no choice but to know more, or we’ll be left wondering what the attraction was. Rarely does love at first sight work unless we are passionately self-aware and happen to stumble upon someone or someplace else who is also beholden to this quality. Yes, I just wrote “someplace” as I want to believe that just as I fell in love with someone who was looking for a similar type of person, able to love, Nature must have an abundance of love intertwined within its complexity for those who are attuned to finding it.

Tillamook Bay between Garibaldi and Rockaway Beach, Oregon

So, if Nature is embracing me in love, it would make more sense to me that as I wake, I find this desire to explore and touch its softer, more subtle corners, allowing me to bask in a day of sensual discovery. This is the hallmark of love.

Bayocean Peninsula Park in Tillamook, Oregon

Maybe Nature is love? And while there is a fierce side of it, discompassionate for the comings and goings of all that is required to sustain it, there is that time, if we are lucky enough, in which we might find a window of opportunity to roam within the freedom of love. To always seek intellectual meaning in life is to negate the thing that is right in front of us, but love is also the thing that might require the most rigorous analysis from a species that has gotten caught up with labels, utility, wealth, and status. Moving through the complexity of science, function, philosophy, religion, consumerism, and other distractions that busies our minds, what is left on the other side is love.

Bayocean Peninsula Park in Tillamook, Oregon

While I’ve not been everywhere, from the places I have been, I cannot say I’ve ever met a biome I didn’t like. Stand at the ocean, and you’ll see it push things out of it. Bits of life disgorged from this vast sea set out on land; sometimes, it even crawls out, but most of what comes ashore is pushed by the force of the current. At some point, these shells, plants, crabs, shells, and the algae foam chasing across the slickwater sand in the Annual Foamberg Reggata will all just disappear. You also were pushed into life, you only have minutes to look up at the sun unencumbered and free to bask in the warmth of the sunshine. Don’t waste that precious time, as you’ll not gain another second when the end comes.

Dead Bird at Bayocean Peninsula Park in Tillamook, Oregon

The impressions have been made, but they’ll have to linger in the pot of memories melding with the myriad of other human ingredients collected in my head. If I’m lucky, they’ll emerge in future writings; otherwise, they go to the grave with me someday, my existence wiped off the beach, dragged back into the ocean of life. As this journey unfolds, I can only hope my shared words so far capture something of what I was able to distill along the way, but I will have to wait to learn what filters through my mind as I work on sorting what may have held importance. What are people waiting for? We cannot grasp the joys of love and discovery in chasing dead and hollow icons. Our minds and emotions are the temples that are supposed to be filled with the treasures of experience. These can only be collected through a kind of vulnerability where we recognize our ignorance of most everything and our need for the embrace of love found in others willing to share with us while we give of ourselves.

Caroline Wise at Bayocean Peninsula Park in Tillamook, Oregon

Love is right in front of you; it’s all around you, below and above you. Again, I have to think about the Navajo Beauty Way Prayer with beauty all around us. Isn’t that just another way of saying love is all around you and that we walk in love?

Bayocean Peninsula Park in Tillamook, Oregon

Our day represented in this blog entry doesn’t follow my usual narrative of photo, impressions, photo; these words are more about the arch of our trip through my perception, as thoughts bring on new ideas and conclusions that were somehow part of the time I contemplated aspects of moments.

Bayocean Peninsula Park in Tillamook, Oregon

As for the day itself, we started with a long walk on Manzanita Beach before heading south and crossing the Nehalem River, which is the broad panorama nine photos down from the top. Our next stop was at Nedonna Beach between Nehalem Bay and Rockaway Beach. The third location is right next to the Three Graces near the mouth of Tillamook Bay between Rockaway Beach and Garibaldi. After returning to Tillamook, we headed out to Cape Meares but never made it as we detoured out to Bayocean, where a townsite once stood before being claimed by the ocean. Our afternoon walk brought us up to 12 miles (19.3km) of steps for the day, with the majority of them accumulated on a deserted beach with no one else in sight.

Bayocean Peninsula Park in Tillamook, Oregon

For the third night running, we lounged in the hot tub under a moon, inching ever closer to fullness. I nearly forgot to mention that our Cozy Cottage also has an outdoor shower, which, of course, we took advantage of. The place was cleaned up tonight, and the car was mostly packed, so we can get an early start in the morning as we start our drive southeast towards home.

Bayocean Peninsula Park in Tillamook, Oregon

In the calm of the early evening on still-reflective waters, our sense of awe draws us in to pause and sigh at our good fortune. We have the time, inclination, ability, and resources to venture into ourselves while simultaneously moving out of the potential trap of being cozy at home. We do not wish to grow old in the sense of becoming bitter and fixed in our ways. Growing old to become majestic like a Sequoia or Redwood while still branching out seems like an apt metaphor as we age. The clouds reflected in the waters are how those who reach maturity and wisdom should be reflected in those younger people who are still gathering experience. This is the image of tranquility, where the transition from day to night, water to sky, and earth to heavens waits with limitless opportunity for us to discover how we fit into the whole.

Thanksgiving – Coastal Style

JWise Food, Photo of the Day, Travels

The Cozy Cottage in Nehalem, Oregon

Let’s start with being thankful for last night’s dinner. Before dipping into this very American holiday today, we feasted last night on German grilled bratwursts from Heidelberg Bakery in Phoenix, Arizona. Our brats were wonderfully paired with some Mildessa sauerkraut. Two of the five brats from dinner and nearly half a can of the kraut ended up in our scrambled eggs this morning. We checked the internet last night to be sure we should try something that sounds kinda weird, but others were gung-ho about mixing these awkward ingredients together, so we gave it a shot and can assure you that we’d do it again. Pictured is the kitchen from the Cozy Cottage we found on Airbnb.

The Cozy Cottage in Nehalem, Oregon

This was our bedroom last night before we pulled off the blankets and pillows to make room for our comforter and pillows from home. But we weren’t ready for bed yet, not even close. We had a hot tub outside waiting for us, timed to bring it to peak temperature at 8:00 in the morning and 9:00 at night. Even before we got into that under a moonlit sky, we took a pastry-wrapped brie loaded with huckleberry from the Blue Heron Cheese Company out of the fridge and threw it in the oven. With apples left from the dozen we picked in Gold Beach, Caroline sliced some up for our dessert extravaganza of baked brie, compote, and apples. How we didn’t pass out right then remains a mystery, but somehow, we found the energy to venture into the cold evening air to bask in the hot tub. Andre, the owner of our accommodation, even provides an outdoor shower for rinsing off after getting out of the chlorinated water.

The Cozy Cottage in Nehalem, Oregon

This brings us to the here and now. Over to your right, and hardly visible, is our little red gate, which is a private entrance. To the right of that is the hot tub, which I hope to get a good photo of before we leave. Our turducken is thawed and ready for the oven; it will require 2.5 hours to bake, and we might be meeting a friend from up here later today, too. Right now, though, we are going for a mile-and-a-half walk (2.4km) each way down to the beach. The next photo you see is from that walk.

Forest floor in Nehalem, Oregon

We’d been back from our walk a few hours before I could muster the energy to start writing this stuff; maybe I needed a break after 15 straight days of writing. After lunch, I was able to load up the photos. And an hour later I managed to prepare them for posting and even uploaded them. Then they sat here neglected while I goofed off entertaining myself. Caroline’s been sitting behind me on the couch, knitting my socks while watching a documentary series about how we see things.

As for the walk, it was brilliant, perfect, wonderful, and every other superlative that I could list as I try to convey how much we appreciate these Thanksgiving Day walks along the ocean. Just take a look at the beauty of the sea and imagine yourself here on this gorgeous fall day.

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

The other day, Caroline suggested we create a kind of “meta entry” about our trips to Oregon where we post an image taken from the 18 years we’ve been coming up here and feature them sequentially by location instead of date so we can see the extent of our stops. Today, we extended this to a meta entry about Thanksgiving, where we feature an image from all of the Thanksgivings we have photos for.

True, this little segue has nothing to do with this photo of Caroline cresting the grassy sand dune that will take us out to Manzanita Beach, but I’m at a bit of a loss to share anything else. I’m also aware enough that it isn’t so much what I write today that will be important as much as how it reads in the future when we are reminiscing about our longest-ever trip to Oregon. Minus drive time to and from Phoenix, Arizona, we’ll have been up here for 16 consecutive days. I wonder if this is possibly longer by twice than our longest previous vacations on the Oregon coast?

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

A faint rainbow but a rainbow nonetheless. This could portend rain coming soon or that it’s moving on. Our positive vibe produces a feeling that whatever the weather did, it would have proven to be the perfect scenario for creating memories that will stand out as having helped form the best vacation ever. Until the next vacation to wherever it is, we go will win the mantle of Best Ever.

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

To the south and from the north, the sky looked foreboding, but right overhead, the happiness of John and Caroline created a bubble of delight that everyone else on the beach was able to enjoy with us. How do I know it is us that are responsible for this phenomenon? Just ask Caroline for proof as she’ll join in my story that somehow, when we travel, we seem to have the perfect conditions and that a day rarely goes by, even in the cold seasons, when the sun doesn’t come out and smile upon us. To be honest, while probably needing to knock on wood, we never really understand other’s vacations where they complain that seemingly everything went wrong.

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

Okay, there was this issue of too many people on the beach, but that happens every Thanksgiving. We can be out for a walk along the ocean the day before and the day after, and there won’t be a lot of people with us, but just before the feasting begins at midday, the throngs come out to build their appetites. You can see from the density we were all quite aware of the social distancing requirements.

Jellyfish at Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

There were a few jellyfish onshore and some tiny little baby jellyfish. You can see the individual grains of sand, so I hope you glean an idea of just how small this transparent bubble of jelly was.

Caroline Wise at Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

Taking a moment to think about the time we brought Jutta, Caroline’s mom up here, we checked to be sure it wasn’t too late in Germany and gave her a call from the beach. After that family connection, we called Caroline’s father, Hanns, on WhatsApp and were able to show him our location. I wish my mother-in-law was even a little tech-savvy like my father-in-law, as there’s so much more we could share with her. All the same, it’s always nice to hear her voice.

Oysters at Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

We saw a guy inspecting something on the beach; from afar, it looked like the carcass of a fish. As the surf came up, he dragged it ashore. We still couldn’t tell what it was, but we were heading right for him. He was on a video call showing a friend what he’d found: a large bag with hundreds of oysters in it. We asked for a peek into it as we’d never seen such a thing, and with that, he offered us all we’d like to take with us. Thanking him profusely for sharing his treasure, we only nabbed five of them, but before we got further down the beach, four of them found their way back into the sea. One came to the cottage with us.

We’ve had great oysters along the way during our travels, places we’d go back to because of the oysters. One thing we’ve never had is to eat an oyster that’s only been out of the ocean for an hour. For Caroline, this was a milestone because not only did she eat this mollusk, but she pried it out of its shell. No hot sauce, no lemon, just a bit of the seawater that was still in the shell, and she loved it.

Beach in Manzanita, Oregon

We were over 5 miles (8km) on our walk by the time we got back to the cottage, hungry and ready for some lazy time. Around 3:30, our Creole Pork Turducken Roll from the CajunGrocer in Louisiana was placed into the oven. At four pounds, it was recommended we cook it for 2.5 hours. Caroline nor I have ever had Cajun pork sausage stuffed into a chicken, stuffed into a duck, stuffed into a turkey, but we were willing to try it.

It’s 6:00 p.m. as I write this, and our Thanksgiving meal is sitting on the stovetop, resting for the recommended 20 minutes. It smells great, just like a traditional turkey dinner, really, but a taste test will need to happen before I can offer more. Yesterday, we made a Cranberry Jello Mold, an old recipe from my mom that features chopped cranberries, celery, and walnuts, with shredded apples, a bit of orange juice, a box of raspberry Jello, and while it may sound strange, it’s an all-time favorite of ours. Lastly, we also have a sweet potato to add a veggie to our dinner.

Cajun Sausage Stuffed Turducken from CajunGrocer in Louisiana

We’d do this again; the same cannot be said about the Tofurkey we tried years ago. The only thing missing was some gravy but we weren’t that prepared out on this journey for getting that detail-oriented. We have enough leftovers to add to our scrambled eggs with the last packet of Chinese pickled veggies for breakfast, and we have four slices for sandwiches. Come to think of it; maybe we’ll have open-face turducken with melted smoked brie for lunch if we are near the cottage.

Cranberry Jello Mold

Other than using cranberries for scones, this is the best dish ever for cranberry lovers. Because we’ve been doing our best to self-isolate on this trip, we brought our frozen cranberries with us instead of picking up fresh local ones. We couldn’t even be certain we’d find local cranberries as although the Oregon coast is a popular place to grow them, we don’t know what’s found in the local markets. Next up, a dip into the hot tub before heading to the bedroom where the TV is; we’ll be watching My Octopus Teacher and sharing a bag of microwave popcorn. I’m sharing this because all three of these activities are out of the ordinary for us.

Is This Vacation Or Did We Move?

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Starting the day with an outdoor shower was incredibly invigorating. Our previous experiences with cleaning up in the great outdoors have been in Hawaii, on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, on the Alsek River in the Yukon, and in Alaska. This was a two-person operation as I needed Caroline to hold my towel and change of clothes due to the heavy overnight rains that left every surface within arm’s length dripping wet. While I held her stuff, I also managed to nab a couple of discreet photos that allowed modesty to be maintained. If you were wondering if it was cold out, of course it was. The temperature was about 46 degrees (8 Celsius) this morning, but we were not going to miss this opportunity.

We are checking out of our Airstream at Hart’s Camp today as we’ve only booked a couple of nights. Good thing we chose our first night to burn through all of our complimentary wood as it rained for a good part of the night but obviously only intermittently, as I’m sure you saw that amazing steak we barbecued on the grill. The last thing we did here was feed a few of the neighborhood rabbits some apples we had picked back at the beginning of our Oregon adventure when we were staying at Gold Beach.

This is us looking south on the Nestucca River, which is only important for your orientation when I point out that the next photo is us looking north up the Nestucca River. We are still in the Cape Kiwanda area and just on the edge of the Bob Straub State Park. Last year, at nearly the same time of year to the day, we made our first visit to this state park sandwiched between this river and the Pacific Ocean, but back then, we had a perfect sunny day.

As I said, the Nestucca River north, as seen from the other side of the bridge.

I mean, you saw it with your own eyes, north and south; the weather looked grim, but look to the west and its sunny skies. This doesn’t change our decision to skip the park; we’re just getting a look at the ocean from this really tall sand dune.

I believe this is right at the transition where the Nestucca River turns into the Nestucca Bay. Or maybe it’s where depths of forest represented by shades of gray fade into the distance, and we find that the mystery of what is hidden in the fog makes for an intriguing visual story.

It’s well into the afternoon as we enter Garibaldi, passing this old smokestack that used to belong to a lumber mill back in 1927. We took the inland route through Tillamook so we could stop once more at the Blue Heron Cheese Company, sharing a grilled bacon and cheese sandwich. We skipped the ice cream. This being the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the chaos of COVID, many shops have peculiar hours. One of the yarn stores Caroline wants to visit closes today at 3:00, and we aren’t wasting time to get there besides stopping for this 1 photo.

Okay, so we had to stop for this other photo on Tillamook Bay as the sun’s reflection demanded to be captured.

Seriously, I’d forgotten all about the Three Graces here on the south end of Rockaway Beach. Everybody has to stop for these iconic rocks here near the inlet of Tillamook Bay.

We made it with an hour to spare, meaning we had just enough time to shop for yarn. While I posted a bare-shouldered photo of Caroline earlier, it’s this one that feels naughty. I asked her to pull down her mask while we were the only customers in a shop so I could capture her smile while she was fondling the yarn for one of my next pairs of handmade socks. “One of them,” you ask. I picked two skeins of yarn today. While I seriously DO NOT believe her, my wife is trying to tell me that I’m approaching a dozen skeins already. That’s ridiculous because, at the rate she toils over making me the most perfect socks, it would take nearly 12 days to make me that many socks, and that would be asking way too much. Hmmm, now I can’t remember if it takes about a day to knit my socks or about 40 hours stretched across a month. Well, all I really know is that she needs to get busy because a man can never have too many hand-knitted products. My kingdom for wool squawked the Wise King.

I didn’t share it, but Coastal Yarns in Cannon Beach was our first destination; our second was the beach itself and its big draw, Haystack Rock. The next images may seem absurd to a reader, as one would be right to ask, “Isn’t one enough?” Yeah, well, clearly, you’ve never been to Cannon Beach at sunset, so your question would be misguided. The more appropriate question would be, “Just how many photos did you take before whittling the choice down to less than six? My sad truth is that I might be approaching a total of 400-500 photos of the Haystack shot over the years. If I learned I had twice that, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Thought I mixed things up a bit by looking south beyond that rock just out of view on the right, and I’d stare into the gloom of the stormy shore that was so threatening I was certain we’d be gone in 15 minutes.

The light here doesn’t need to change much to create the next iteration of astonishing. Just after taking this image, the rain picked up, and a bunch of us started heading back up the shore, as that was that. But as Caroline and I were just feet away from leaving the beach, we looked back and realized the rain had stopped, and there was a small break in the clouds. Could there be hope for a sunset?

Lowtide at the Haystack on a stormy fall day. The drama is photographic heaven for a person addicted to hitting the shutter button. By the way, you need not even ask, “Which smartphone do you shoot with?” I am not a cretin; I use an old man’s camera by way of 24 megapixel DSLR. Funny, but 15 years ago, when I got my first DSLR, there were a bunch of old grumpy men at the camera shop (a place where they used to sell lenses and film for analog cameras; that’s a long story I won’t cover here), and those guys were extolling the virtues of their film cameras. I just know that there’s someone out there shooting this exact scene today on his Apple iPhone 12 Pro and will win awards for it while I win the Curmudgeon of the Day trophy.

Who really cares how these scenes are captured? It’s the memories and how long we can hold on to them that’s important. These monoliths sit right next to the Haystack, and I find them as beautiful on their own as the giant on their side.

I’m stopping here and leaving you with this serenely romantic fade to evening.

Almost Did Nothing

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

North of Netarts, Oregon

This is the road through Cape Lookout. On a previous trip, years ago, I was, in fact looking out when I spotted an owl in the trees over the road. It was much like a day like today, but then again, it seems like nearly every time we’ve been up this road, there’s a section in the clouds.

Netarts Bay in Netarts, Oregon

Pulled over to get out of somebody’s way as we plodded along at tourist speed. This is a nice stop we’ve been to before. It affords us the opportunity to look back at the mountains we just drove through. The water next to us is part of Netarts Bay and the home of The Schooner Restaurant, but we won’t be able to visit this year. To the astute, you may have noticed this place is mentioned often here at johnwise.com; well, if you ever had the chance to try their Oyster Rockoyaki and you like oysters in the first place, you’d understand the obsession.

Oceanside Beach in Oceanside, Oregon

The last time we were in Oceanside, the tide was too high for us to feel comfortable for a quick walk in the tunnel that’s at the bottom center of this photo. This rock that juts into the sea stands about 100 feet tall and has a nearly vertical face. But to travel under it, the walk is a mere 30 feet or so to the other side.

Oceanside Beach in Oceanside, Oregon

The tunnel is rough-hewn, and at one point, nearly to the other side, the water got too deep for my hiking boots, but Caroline’s rubber boots that we picked up back on the first days of this peace-of-mind trip took her right through.

Oceanside Beach in Oceanside, Oregon

This was the first day that the wind seemed biting cold on the cheeks, but we were prepared with a wool base layer, fleece, a heavy rain-proof shell, and a beanie. I should point out that having the masks handily about our necks allows for quick pull-up for a bit of Balaklava warmth on the face. It was a short walk back to the car as rain started coming down shortly after snapping this photo.

Oceanside Beach in Oceanside, Oregon

When signs are as entertaining as this, they must be remembered and celebrated even.

View from Cape Mears Lighthouse, Oregon

Simply a lot of love for a forest that will hug the short drive down to our next stop.

View from Cape Mears Lighthouse, Oregon

This is that destination: the Cape Meares Lighthouse. It’s been a while since we were last here, but it was back in 2005 that I took one of my favorite photos of this lighthouse. That image is so deeply seared into our memories that we knew something was wrong with this picture. I don’t really know how we had phone service out here, but we did, and with it, Caroline discovered that back in 2010, two drunk young men thought it was a great idea to empty their guns into an irreplaceable fresnel lens. First, why is it always men? Second, they drove this winding road at night drunk while carrying guns. Why couldn’t they have taken their car off a cliff instead? I know that’s not very polite, but I feel the treasure in this 130-year lighthouse is worth more than their lives and what it cost us in repairs and the price of incarceration after putting them to trial.

View from Cape Mears Lighthouse, Oregon

While this looks like we’re doing stuff and not nothing, it’s actually very little compared to our previous trips when we’d be out at the break of dawn. Today, we hung out in our Airstream, having a late breakfast of scrambled eggs with leftover hamburger from two days ago; you remember the 8-pounder from Newport Cafe? Well, that actually was part of breakfast yesterday too. It was going on 11:00 when we hauled ourselves outside and got in the car to do stuff before falling victim to doing nothing. Now we’re out here, and things are about to get far more interesting.

Defunct road near Cape Mears, Oregon

Back on November 21, 2012, Caroline and I were out on this very road. We’d visited the lighthouse just as we did today, but instead of continuing down the Three Capes Scenic Road to Cape Meares and around to Tillamook, we turned around to return to Cape Lookout, where we were spending the night in a yurt. It turns out that on that day eight years ago a landslide had begun that was producing “bubbling” on the road. By January 17, 2013, the road had shifted 9 feet, and the county moved to close it. It’s been closed since.

Defunct road near Cape Mears, Oregon

We hadn’t been up here to the lighthouse since 2012. On subsequent visits to the coast, we knew there was a road closure up here and that we couldn’t drive through, so we concentrated on seeing other areas in between that had been neglected, such as Pacific City, Netarts, and Oceanside. Seeing that the blocked road was right at the entrance to Cape Meares Lighthouse and there were no signs against trespassing, we decided to walk down a bit to see if we could find where the slide happened.

Defunct road near Cape Mears, Oregon

While the road is decaying and being taken over by forest it wasn’t until we got to this large buckle that we thought we understood the extent of what caused the closure. Thinking there could be more, we continued on our walk. By the way, on this side of the mountain, there were no winds, so our walk was comfortable and dry, too.

Newt on a defunct road near Cape Mears, Oregon

Along the way, we had to be on the lookout for newts, as they now rule the road.

Defunct road near Cape Mears, Oregon

We’d been hoping to stumble upon an overlook that Caroline remembered stopping at on some previous trip, but we couldn’t find it, so we finally turned around. There was a memorial sign next to the road in memory of Walt Gile that had me wondering why that sign was here while all other barriers, signs, and road artifacts had been removed. I walked over to snap a photo so we could look him up at a later date. Approaching the sign, I could see that an overgrown road lay beyond a berm, so we went to investigate.

Shortly before we got to this view, Caroline thought was extremely similar to the one she remembered; there was a seismic sensor embedded in the fading asphalt. That made me a bit nervous as we’d not seen one of these yet. Maybe a dozen or two feet from there, the road took a strange turn up as though it had been lifted. Is this what was meant by a “bubbling” road? There was something peculiar about getting closer to what seemed to be an edge, and that was because, just past this, the land simply dropped straight off.

Defunct road near Cape Mears, Oregon

Wherever this road once went, it no longer goes there. This is no little bit of road buckling or bubbling, the earth just slid away and is now deep below. Now my minor nervousness is compounded by my sense of vertigo, and while it’s irrational to think that just because we’re standing on this unstable land, it could slide while we are on it, I’m still leery, and we take off.

Defunct road near Cape Mears, Oregon

Further research this evening reveals that it looks like a bypass will be built and that fundraising has already begun. Someday, we may once again drive this road, but today, we were able to walk about a mile down the middle of the street without a worry that someone would come racing around the corner and run us over. Instead, we had to worry if racing land might run us over.

Blue Heron Cheese Factory in Tillamook, Oregon

Anyone who’s seen a blog entry from us about the Oregon Coast should have seen this one coming. A turkey, cranberry, and smoked brie sandwich from the Blue Heron Cheese Company is obligatory, even if we do have to eat it outside in our car this time. We also bought three wheels of smoked brie to bring home in our cooler. Something of a coup was the pastry-wrapped wheel of brie with huckleberry that we’ll be baking tomorrow, as one shouldn’t eat too many desserts in one day. For those who don’t know, the Blue Heron is in Tillamook, and if we are in Tillamook, you should be able to guess what comes next.

Tillamook Creamery in Tillamook, Oregon

Socially distanced Tillamook ice cream straight from the factory is what came next. If you are reading this from outside America, Tillamook is famous for its cheddar cheese, but here in town and across Oregon, the factory has an ice cream counter that normally has hundreds of people in line waiting for some fat scoops of flavors such as Marionberry Pie, Mountain Huckleberry, along with tried and true varieties like chocolate and vanilla bean. Today, we tried a scoop of Coffee Almond Fudge.

Caroline Wise at Tillamook Creamery in Tillamook, Oregon

But that wasn’t all, as a Cold Brew Milkshake captured our tastebuds, and before I knew it I was suffering from a wicked ice-cream headache.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Dutch Bros. in Tillamook, Oregon

Knowing the crash was coming, it was off to where else but Dutch Bros. This selfie turned out so GREAT that it’ll be our holiday cards for this year if we sent out holiday cards. Instead, it’s a grim reminder of what we look like tanked up on smoked brie, ice cream, and soy latte with an extra shot.

Steak from Cattleman's Exchange in Canadian, Texas on the grill at Hart's Camp in Pacific City, Oregon

This steak traveled far to be grilled up here on the Oregon Coast. About a month ago, I received a dry-ice-filled box with six ribeye steaks. Not just any steaks either; these came from the Cattle Exchange in Canadian, Texas. Back on the 4th of July long weekend in 2006, Caroline and I were staying at Arrington Ranch, as seen in the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks when we decided to grab some dinner at a local steak house. We were expecting the worst, as who finds a good steak in some small town?

Cattle Exchange doesn’t do good steak; they make a great steak. So great in fact, that I finally bit the bullet and ordered some online; they weren’t cheap. The first one of six is being had tonight; we are splitting it. We kept this 1.2-pound (half-a-kilo) steak frozen these past two weeks until we could start it thawing yesterday. While I had to grill on it on a cold night in between rain showers, it was yet one more incredible highlight to this amazing day of doing almost nothing.

Moon over Hart's Camp in Pacific City, Oregon

While out grilling dinner, the clouds were breaking up and scattering quickly with the ocean over at Pacific City Beach heard in the distance. Sadly, we are too full, too lazy, too warm, and cozy to go hit the outdoor shower tonight. Hopefully, in the morning, we won’t chicken out from taking a hot shower in the freezing air as we really do need to take advantage of that flower-lined cabin outdoors.

Oregon Road Trip – Day 12

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Moolack Shores Inn in Newport, Oregon

Finding somewhere to start when the obvious is to state that we are leaving the Moolack Shores Inn to continue on our journey north. That sounds mundane, expected even. So I’ll mix things up: We’ll go south instead, even though our next reservation is up north. But there must be a good story to explain the dramatic change in plans, huh? Not really, the nearest Dutch Bros. is down on the south side of Newport, and we have hours to go before we’ll check into our lodging late this afternoon.

Agate Beach in Newport, Oregon

We got off Highway 101 and onto Oceanview Drive so we could walk to Agate Beach just south of Yaquina Head Lighthouse. Prepared for a cold, chilly wind, as that’s what we had last time on this wide stretch of beach, we were surprised by how quickly we had to doff the jackets and enjoy the surprise sunshine. You see, the weather forecast had promised us bad weather, but we had this. Expecting them to be somewhat correct, we figured it would be just a matter of time before the dark gray clouds of some moody weather moved in to dose us with the flavors of Oregon in fall.

Agate Beach in Newport, Oregon

While it’s our inclination to hug the surf, a small stream we had to cross on our way to the beach captured my imagination as to just where it went after we passed it. Approaching the end of the beach, we turned inland and found the stream running up against a forested cliffside, offering its own brand of beautiful scenery,

Agate Beach in Newport, Oregon

The water was running clear with many shallow spots where surges in the current created these ripples in the sand. In other places, the water had carved deep pools around stranded logs, delivered by high tides that pushed the dead trees a couple of hundred feet further inland than where the surf is pounding the shore today.

Armed with coffee and a full tank of gas, we headed north and made our first stop at the Devil’s Punchbowl in Otter Rock. Caroline had the idea that there was a footpath down to the basin, but we couldn’t find any sign of it, and the tide was too high in any case.

Nothing is especially important in this scene besides the blue sky, the great rocks, and the admonition not to go beyond the fence, which would be incredibly foolish, as the cliffside drops precipitously straight down into some jagged rocks and hammering surf. Sometimes, these photos of things overlooked fill in the gaps to make a fuller picture of the details that create a day on vacation.

We didn’t know we wanted ice cream until we saw the other couple enjoying their cones on this sunny day. Funny that famous Mo’s Seafood & Chowder, in their tiniest location here in Otter Rock, would be closed for the season, as who wouldn’t want a nice hot bowl of slumgullion on a cold day? But instead, we have the option for this summery treat.

I don’t think we’ve seen Siletz Bay south of Lincoln City the same way twice. Neither Caroline nor I even know if we’ve stopped at this particular turnout. Depending on the weather and lighting, this place can be a favorite for photographing the tree on the rock, which is often surrounded by water, but not today.

Up the road a bit, we finally stopped at Gallucci’s Pizza after driving by it countless times and stupidly intoning the name Gallucci with an affected, fakey New York Italian accent over and over until we are both laughing. If we had had witnesses in the car, they might have thought we’d lost our minds as we veered into such a goofy parody of Italian Americans. As for the pizza, I wish we had something nice to say about it or that I could say we’re looking forward to a future visit, but it was seriously mediocre. Maybe it’s a great pizza for the area and the people who live here, so I wish them the best of luck, but then again, they’ve been here for years, surviving without us anyway.

Hart's Camp in Pacific City, Oregon

Not much longer after that, we’re pulling into Pacific City looking for Hart’s Camp, where we’re staying for the next couple of nights. Added bonus, the place has dozens of free-range rabbits just wandering around.

Hart's Camp in Pacific City, Oregon

The first thing we check out in our “yard” is our outdoor shower. I’ve got to be honest, as I write this outside by the fire, we can see the exhale of our breath; it’s that cold. Maybe we can shower in the middle of the day, and it won’t be all that chilly?

Hart's Camp in Pacific City, Oregon

Into the Airstream where we will be sleeping. With two televisions, a gas barbecue, an outdoor shower, wifi, and rabbits, we feel like the perfect hipsters on vacation. We even have a Chemex coffee pot that pushes us into an entirely new league of aficionados. The only thing missing is some trendy alcohol.

Hart's Camp in Pacific City, Oregon

If the blanket looks familiar from our stay at Ocean Haven in Yachats, it is. We brought our cozy bedding because who doesn’t sleep better with their own blanket and pillows?

With time to spare, we headed down to the ocean to catch a couple of miles under the setting sun. Needed to burn off some of that pizza and ice cream, too.

Caroline Wise and John Wise in Pacific City, Oregon

Look behind us, and you’ll see a solar halo. No, I’m not making it up. This halo was in the sky for about 15 minutes, opposite the sun. We’ve seen sundogs before, but this might be our first solar halo.

Caroline Wise at sunset in Pacific City, Oregon

This isn’t even the end of our perfect day yet; there’s still more to come.

Caroline Wise in Pacific City, Oregon

From the beach, we were walking back to Hart’s Camp but had to pass the Pelican Brewing Company first. Caroline thought she might like a beer, and we saw that they’d set up a to-go window, so why not go support them? A particular bottle looked interesting in the window, so we pointed to one, and the girl rang it up. With my card out, she tells me $25. Huh? Twenty-five dollars for a bottle of beer? So I asked how much the can was next to it, and she said, “$3.50.”

Lucky us, a guy had walked up who worked there and was doing something to our left. He explained that this was indeed $25 but worth every penny. By now, this beer is famous, and the reason is that it’s a barleywine-style ale malt aged in bourbon barrels. The name of it is the Mother of all Storms, and it was brewed back in 2014.

Hart's Camp in Pacific City, Oregon

With trendy alcohol now on hand, filet mignons on the grill paired with some corona beans, a fire, and our Airstream lodging getting toasty on this cold fall night, we are enjoying life here on day 12 of our annual Oregon road trip.

When Returning Is Not The Same

JWise Photo of the Day, Thoughts, Travels

Right in front of you, the world could have changed, but how would you know? Do you think it will be obvious? At first, everything looks like it’s in its place, and you have no reason to doubt that things are as they should be. Maybe you should go have a closer look.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

The anemones are where they should be. They look healthy, pretty even. Maybe you wonder why there are no sea stars here or mussels? Have they ever been here on this beach?

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

Look ashore; things look dandy over there, even inviting, but this part of the walk has us walking next to the surf. There are clues to something afoot. I took a photo of it and was oblivious to what was in the frame. We kept heading south, walking along on our way as though it was just another day.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

We stop to wonder why these blue spots are on a nearby rock exposed by the low tide. It only took a second to deduce that there had been barnacles attached there. We try to figure out why the point of contact would be blue but we never thought for a second that maybe there’d been barnacles living here in greater numbers just recently.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

As we strolled along, I noticed a hole in the rock well before Caroline, and even after pointing it out, it took her a while to notice the parallax occurring with the background behind the hole. There it was, right in front of us. We’d walked the length of the beach to get here, and now we could approach it to see what was on the other side.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

Our view was of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse. I searched the internet looking for someone else who might have snapped this photo, too, but I came up with nothing. Has no one else seen this yet, or is it simply not compelling enough?

Fossils at Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

A clam fossil looking mighty old embedded in the rock. But how old is it? Is it really a clam, or could it be a Panopea Abrupta, which is an extinct cousin of the geoduck? There are many fossils all around us at the end of the beach, which I should point out is only the end of the beach because the surf is high enough not to allow us to navigate around the cliffside with the hole in it.

Fossils at Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

There are many fragments, but of course, it’s the more intact and recognizable pieces that draw me in. I can look right past the white flecks of broken pieces because I’m going to see what I want to see. But what if those small remnants were part of something really amazing? I can’t know that, as I’m not trained to see that type of detail. It’s kind of like Donald Johanson walking in the desert of Ethiopia when he spots a bone fragment among the rocks and discovers Australopithecus afarensis, better known as Lucy. I’m under no illusion we’ll find something that important, especially because these fossils are said to be about 18 million years old and are from the sea, but the point is, I wouldn’t know what I was looking at even if I was staring right at it.

Fossils at Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

This particular shell is bigger than my hand and makes me wonder why we never see shells this size here onshore. Are there mollusks this size right here in the ocean? Which one of the 85,000 mollusk types is this one? The snarky answer is obvious: it’s a dead one. With a bit of research after we left the beach, it turns out that this might be a member of the Pectinidae family, otherwise known as a scallop.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

Then it finally dawns on me after being out here for well over an hour; there’s been a serious landslide here recently. How did I miss this? We’ve been walking along the ocean only 60 feet away, and I didn’t notice this. There are fallen trees in that photo of the cliffside eight photos ago that totally slipped by me. Only on our way back up the coast did I notice them, as I was by then studying all the signs that some land here was slipping towards the sea. Was this due to the recent king tides and heavy rains? Later, I asked at our front desk, but the clerk hadn’t even heard about landslides just down the beach from her.

Fossils at Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

Between taking an inventory of areas that I’m assuming plunged recently, I continued to be momentarily transfixed by so many easily accessible fossils being on display. I started searching my memory of our visit back in 2018 and can only remember the various hues of clay and the sculpted cliffsides that drew my focus into them, but fossils were not part of the landscape. Are these widely scattered signs of the earth’s past only on display because of a recent major disruption in the fabric of the coast?

Fossils at Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

Buried in the sand was a shell that Caroline believed was a recent one that washed in on the current. She grabbed at it only to find it attached to something below the sand; it is now part of rock along with another mollusk shell, keeping its petrified cousin company across the millennia.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

This entanglement of seaweed is here not as evidence of earth movement or ocean history but is featured because Caroline is enchanted by these displays of sea spaghetti.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

The stuff I was photographing back in 2018 is mostly covered like this. Why shouldn’t the coast be radically different two years after our initial visit to this beach? That our return is not the same as it was should come as no surprise, and in some ways, it’s not, what’s more surprising is that we were just over at the water’s edge and weren’t noticing any of this. While I may not want to mix politics and vacation, I can’t help but think how many people close to a particular conservative persuasion are failing to see a drift to the extreme right when it’s right in front of them.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

We see murky bluish water nearby and then walk past this huge rusty cavern of water emerging from a slice in the cliffside. While we can clearly see the rust-colored staining going on, we can’t offer anything else on why it’s happening or where its origins are. We can note it but are lost in interpreting it. I wish we had a geologist with us right now. The damned thing is, we met a guy, also named John, further down the beach, who is a geologist and told us the story about the Astoria Formation that these fossils are located in and that they here are about 18 million years old. Sadly, we couldn’t keep him with us as a guide to interpret every little thing we are seeing.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

Sea-bleached wood rubbed smooth after being tossed against cliffs and abraded with sand is turned into art over time. Dragging something back to Arizona, unfortunately, is not possible as the most beautiful pieces probably weigh close to a thousand pounds or more.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

Images such as this are similar to what I shot a couple of years ago. I stand in astonishment that clay can rehydrate after being locked away for thousands and possibly millions of years. Don’t quote me on that, but this is my observation, considering where the clay is and where the fossils are. Even when you want to accurately interpret reality, and the information is out there somewhere, it’s not always easy to have much more than an opinion. And opinions are not facts.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

We are getting closer to our motel up the cliffside, and it is precisely this view that enamored my senses on our first visit and seemed to be prevalent then. Are there still many other sights like this one down the coast but buried under landslides, or is my memory not particularly accurate?

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

This is not the work of some Coastal Banksy character who graffitis local cliffsides to trick visitors into thinking their weed has them hallucinating. Now that I’m in my room writing about this, I wonder why we didn’t dig some of this blue clay out of the beach to take home and make something from it. Maybe tomorrow we’ll do some harvesting?

Caroline Wise about to enjoy an 8 pound burger from Newport Cafe in Oregon

There was supposed to be a wildly enthusiastic video of Caroline digging in for the first bite of our 8-pound SUPER ULTIMATE MONSTER BURGER! For my readers outside the United States, this burger weighs in at 3.7kg. This epic creation from Newport Cafe down the road really is as wide as my wife and twice as big as her head. Why is there no video? As I started filming, I was wondering why Caroline’s eyes started twitching, except that was no twitch; she was blinking in Morse code for someone to save her from her idiot husband, who thought it was a good idea to go fetch this $36 thing. So I asked for an enthusiastic smile; instead, her retort was something like this, “You got me to share that ridiculous 4-pound Ultimate Monster back in 2012, then a few years later, in 2015, we did it again. In 2017, I successfully talked you out of the 8-pounder with the concession that we’d share a 4-pound Ultimate Monster; yet again, I thought we were done that time. By 2019, I thought we were making progress when we got the puny 3-pound Monster burger, and now you go and spring this on me? I may like their burgers, but what’s next, a 16-pound Double Ultimate Monster Burger?”

Thanksgiving 2021 holds promise for new culinary adventures, and I can thank my enthusiastic wife for her brilliant ideas and for giving in to my slightly outrageous whims.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

It was get out and walk in the rain or pass out till Wednesday. How much of that 8-pound behemoth did we manage to eat? It looks like finches pecked at it there’s so much left. We’ll try folding some of it into an egg scramble in the morning if we can face it. Okay, maybe I’m lying, as you can probably see in my smile that I ate the whole thing. A lot of walking was needed to shake the lethargy brought on by our crazy indulgence, so enough about gluttony and down the beach we go.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

There’s no one else out here, and the tide is on its way up. While there’ll be no sunset in this gray soup of fog and rain, we are still mesmerized by the entire experience. To walk along the ocean is a luxury we cherish.

Moolack Beach in Newport, Oregon

It was a short walk, really, as our path took us north due to our going south in the morning. We reached a stream we were not comfortable crossing, so we turned around to hit the part of the beach we’d trekked earlier. Is anyone interested in buying 6 pounds of leftover burger?