Final Shore Acres

Ok…here is the last Oregon Coast blog. On September 1st, Bill and I returned once again to Shore Acres State Park to walk the trails. These really are beautiful trails and we thoroughly enjoyed walking them, with the exception of the pack trail. I can’t remember which day it was that we decided to hike the pack trail, but what a hike it was. There was no information that we found that mentioned the difficulty of this trail. They really should post that it’s a bear of a hike. It’s a trail that is supposed to go by WWII bunkers, I never saw them, but then my eyes were mostly on the trial ahead, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other and telling myself it couldn’t last forever. What made it worse was the fact that it was a wet day and the trail wasn’t well improved in spots. There were points in the trail that it was very steep and slick with wet leaves and mud. More than once I wasn’t sure I was going to stay on my feet. But I made it, I can say I did it, and that I will likely never do it again.

Of course, at the end of our hike we stopped back through the formal garden to check on my Fruit Salad. It was fun to check back on the progress of their growth. If we ever live stationary again, I’ll look into getting some of these for my garden, but I don’t think we’ll ever live in a stick-house again unless we absolutely have to. We are really enjoying the mobile lifestyle.

September 2nd took us out to Winchester Bay for their festival. The festival itself was small and kind of lame. We walked it in about 5 minutes. The highlight for me was buying a pear scented lotion that was made by a local lady. I like to support local arts and crafts since I am myself a local artisan. For those who don’t know, check me out at Wound Around, and feel free to tell all your friends. We didn’t take any pictures of the festival itself, there wasn’t much there that was photo worthy, but we did snap a couple of picture of this flower garden at the marina.

Well, that wraps up our month on the Oregon Coast. My next post will be about Mount Rainier.

We are currently in Arizona, but I’ll tell that tale in the next post.

;-)K

PS - Just kidding, we aren't in Arizona anymore, were only there for a couple days before he had to head to PA. I may or may not share why, we'll have to see.

Well Crap

Ok, I have this really nice blog all typed up for the last bit of being on the Southern Oregon Coast. I have the pictures from Mount Rainier all sorted and sized and ready to be put into another blog. Then I was going to blog all about the craziness we've experienced in the last week. However, blooger has other ideas. For whatever reason it won't currently let me load any pictures at all. It tells me they are loaded and when I click 'ok' nothing shows up. So, you will all just have to wait until blogger decides you get more. With the way everything is working for us right now that will likely not be until we are in yet another part of the country...who knows!

So, just wanted to let you all know that my having not blogged is not because I've been lazy or busy or whatever, but because blogger won't let me.

;-)K

Shore Acres State Park Part 2

August 30th took us back to Shore Acres State Park. We walked the trail that took us out to the Cape Arago Lighthouse again. After walking out to the lighthouse, we followed the trail back to Shore Acres State Park and the formal gardens.

On a previous trip, before these particular dahlias started to bloom, Bill noticed a kind of dahlia they have in the formal gardens named ‘Kari’s Fruit Salad’. So every time we went back to Shore Acres we had to check in and see how my fruit salad was doing.

Other than that, this day was just about getting a 4-mile walk in and checking out the flowers. Bill also got a shot of a bumblebee when I asked him to shoot this rose. I like this picture a lot.

We moved back up to Portland on the 8th, but I still have at least one more post from our time on the coast. We drove up to Mount Rainier yesterday and I’ll be posting about that as well.

More coming soon.
;-)K

Shore Acres State Park Part 1

August 29^th, Bill and I went to Shore Acres State Park. This has become one of our favorite places to go to walk the trails that run both inland and along the coast. (http://www.oregonstateparks.org/park_97.php) They have several different trails to choose from in addition to the formal gardens. We’ve been to Shore Acres many times in the last couple weeks, so I’ll likely be posting about this more than once.

On this particular day we walked the trail that takes you to the Cape Arago Lighthouse overlook. This trails leads you along the coastline and provides for some awesome views. I had selected over twenty images from this day alone and I’m having a hard time choosing which ones I want to post. There are so many good ones it’s hard to choose from. One of my favorite things about the southern Oregon coast is you never know what you are going to get as far as the weather goes. And the different weather makes for a completely different experience. On this day it was mildly overcast and the fog was just rolling in, which provided that quiet, mysterious kind of feeling. This has rapidly become one of our favorite places in the country.

Along this trail we encountered a couple of pretty interesting things. First is this tree. I have no idea why, but I’m drawn to this tree every time we go to Shore Acres, I just love it. Then just as we were getting started along the trail we stopped so Bill could take some pictures of the various rock formations and whatnot and up pops this little guy out of the water to do a bit a sunbathing. We have some really awesome pictures of the various rock formations in the area, but I had a lot to choose from for this post and they didn’t make it, maybe in another post later on. We’ll have to wait and see.

At the end of this trail, before you turn around and come back, is an overlook to the Cape Arago Lighthouse. It provides nice views of the lighthouse and again, is a completely different experience depending on the weather. Check out last year’s posts to see the difference in the weather.

At the end of our trail walks we always end back in the Formal Gardens as our cool-down walking and take pictures of whatever new flowers happen to be blooming. It’s been a lot of fun to see what’s new from day to day and week to week. Again, I’m having a hard time choosing images to post, there are just so many. At the end of this walk the fog had reached the Garden and gave it an almost fairy-tale feeling. It felt like Brigadoon, for all you musical lovers out there.

I guess that’s going to have to do it for me for this round. I really do wish I could just post all our pictures of all the beautiful flowers. If you want to see them all, you really need to visit the gardens in person.

Stay Tuned for more!

;-)K

Cape Perpetua

Bill and I drove out to Cape Perpetua on August 26th. We have driven past it many times and tried to stop last year but the visitor center was closed for the season. It was a really nice day even though it was a bit windy. We walked a couple of the trails; one that took us down to a blowhole in the rock that at the right time during the tide will blow like a whale. We weren’t there at the right time, but we did get to see it fizz a little bit. We don’t have any pictures of it ‘steaming’ (it looked like steam, but was just mist shooting up through the blow-hole). As I mentioned before, the day was pretty windy, not odd for the southern Oregon coast, but still a beautiful day to walk some of the trails.

The views from the trails are, of course, incredible. The southern Oregon coast is one of our favorite places and somewhere we will likely return to often. They aren’t kidding when they say, “It’s where the trees meet the sea”, it’s really hard to take crappy pictures of this area.

We enjoyed walking the trails of Cape Perpetua and hope to get back to walk some more of them, they have inland hikes that I think would be fun to try. We walked the one that takes you to the blowhole and the one to Devil’s Churn. This again is something we had driven past multiple times saying “we should really go there someday” and this was the day. Bill sat and tried to capture the water crashing on the rocks, he got a few good pictures, but mostly the water was waiting till the camera was off to be the most active, figures.

That’s about it for our Cape Perpetua adventure, we liked it a lot and we’re looking forward to returning for more of the trails. Other than that, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Tune in next time for Shore Acres.

;-)K