Historic Newport, Oregon

Above: The bridge over Yaquina Bay on a foggy evening.

Today I was in full "tourist mode" again. I figured since it was such a rainy day, I may as well spend some time in the town of Newport and explore the historic waterfront area. What a wonderful walk it turned out to be!



Many of the buildings in the historic waterfront area are adorned with murals portraying life on and/or in the sea. Most of the murals have incredible amounts of detail in them. I walked from one end of the historic waterfront to the other and back again, snapping pictures along the way.



Newport is also a well-known Coast Guard town, so two of the first murals that I saw portrayed a Coast Guard rescue helicopter and a rescue boat.



Below: The next one I saw showed a couple of fishing vessels in some choppy seas.





Next I saw several buildings that had whale murals on them. My favorites were the ones with the Orcas (Killer Whales) on them.





Below: Commercial fishing boats in Newport Harbor



Below: The bridge over Yaquina Bay.

Seal Rocks

Above: The trail from the parking area down to the beach at Seal Rocks.

I found another cool place today, known as Seal Rocks, or Seal Rock State Wayside. Unfortunately, even though I spent almost two full days in this area it rained almost the entire time and so I never was able to catch a spectacular sunrise or sunset at this location. However, I tried to make the best of it.



The image above was captured about a half hour after sunset, on a very foggy evening. I had to use a 25 second exposure in order to get enough light for the image to expose properly. The image below was captured the following morning at sunrise, but the clouds were so thick I never did see the sun. Even so, the clouds were quite ominous and I thought they still made for an interesting composition.



During low tide, there are tide pools in this area that can be explored. Below is a sign explaining what can be found in tide pools (you can click on the image to view a much larger version).



Although the picture below was not taken at Seal Rocks, I though it was fitting to include it with this journal entry. This image was taken near Heceta Head Lighthouse, further south from the Seal Rocks area. I pulled into a wayside along the highway and when I got out of the car I could hear all these Sea Lions barking. When I walked to the guard rail I looked down on the beach below, and it was covered with hundreds of Sea Lions! (You can click on this image as well to view a much larger version with more detail).

Driving on Del Rey Beach

Well, a trip to the coast wouldn't be complete if you didn't drive on the beach at some point :-) In Seaside, Oregon there is a beach called Del Rey which you can easily drive your car on. There are a couple of places to drive out onto the beach, then you can drive down the beach for quite a ways. The thing I found most interesting about driving on the sand is how smooth it was. It was like driving on air... no bumps at all!





The beach had a lot of little shorebirds on it... I'm not sure what species of bird this is, but they sure were fun to watch. They were pretty small, but moved very fast. When a wave would wash up on the beach, they'd run in front of it... then as the wave ran back down the beach towards the ocean, they'd follow it down. When another wave came in, they'd run up the beach in front of it. It was very entertaining to watch!



Below: I found several shells like this scattered along the beach.



Below: According to my GPS map, I was actually driving IN the ocean!

Ecola State Park, Oregon

One of my main goals for this trip was to spend a significant amount of time photographing various areas of the Washington and Oregon coasts. Being that this is the rainy season in the Pacific Northwest, I was skeptical as to how successful this endeavor might be. I was lucky in Washington... cooler than normal temperatures meant that the skies were clear and the rain held off. As I made my way to Oregon, the weather changed. The temps warmed up considerably, and it started to rain. Not only that, but it rained HARD as I drove from Forks, Washington to Seaside, Oregon. So hard it reduced visibility enough so that I had to drive about 15 to 20 mph under the speed limit.



I had planned my drive so that I would arrive in Ecola State Park, just south of Seaside, in time to shoot the sunset along the shoreline. As the day progressed, however, it looked less and less promising that there would be a decent sunset. But, as I drove through Astoria I could see a few breaks in the clouds and the rain started to let up. By the time I got to Ecola State Park, there was a big enough break in the clouds that I could see the sun for just a few minutes before it set. The break in the clouds also allowed some really nice sunset color to come through. I ended up shooting until almost an hour after sunset and came away with several images that I am very happy with.





The next morning I went back to Ecola to shoot the morning light, but things were pretty gray so I ended up spending more time in the woods than I did on the shoreline. After the rain from the previous day the forest was glistening.



That morning there were also a couple of fishermen that were fishing from shore using poles that looked to be about 12 to 15 feet long. They fished from atop the giant boulders that were towering over the water. I watched them pull several fish from the water before I left. If you're ever on the northern Oregon coast, be sure to spend some time at Ecola State Park. Its a wonderful park with some great hiking trails and amazing shoreline!

The Makah Nation

(Click on the image to view a much larger version)

This entry goes out to the students of Oshki Ogimaag school in Grand Portage... from one reservation to another! Today I visited the Makah Reservation in northwest Washington state. In fact, the Makah Nation is on the most northwesterly point of land in the continental United States! I had heard that Kyler Deschampe, one of the students at Oshki Ogimaag, was wondering if my trip was indeed real. Well, Kyler, it is indeed real and here's a photo to prove it :-) Ask your teacher to show you on the map where the Makah Nation is... its right on the Pacific Ocean! Its a reservation much like ours, with beautiful forests and shoreline with big waters beyond. Even though I am almost two thousand miles away from Grand Portage, in a way this feels like home.

On a side note, I've been looking for some cool "Pacific Ocean" rocks for my niece Shaelynn... I've found a few neat ones but so far the coolest find has been this crab shell, which I found on a beach in British Columbia. I hope she likes it! It is the shell from a Dungeness Crab, and is about 4 inches wide. These crabs must periodically molt their shell in order to grow. In 2009, thanks to schoolchildren from Sunset Primary School in West Linn, Oregon, and citing its importance to the Oregon economy, the Oregon State Legislature designated the Dungeness Crab as the state crustacean of Oregon.

A weekend in British Columbia

Above: The ferry "Coho", which I took from Port Angeles, Washington to Victoria, British Columbia.

This weekend I went to British Columbia, as I had an invite to go over for a visit with a friend whom I haven't seen in years. At 4:00 on Friday I boarded the "Coho", a passenger and vehicle ferry which provides service between Port Angeles and Victoria. The ferry ride was about 90 minutes long and the trip over was nice and smooth.

Below: My car on the vehicle deck of the ferry.



Below: Looking out over the stern of the ferry as we leave Port Angeles.



Below: The Canadian Coast Guard Cutter "Sir Wilfrid Laurier" docked at the entrance to Victoria harbour.



The ferry arrived in Victoria just before sunset, and I met up with Barb shortly after clearing Canadian customs. We found a place to park and explored the downtown area on foot. Victoria is a beautiful city, and I was awestruck by the lights and the amazing architecture of the buildings. The design of the buildings reminded me of Europe.



Above: Victoria Harbour Ferries decorated with Santa's sleigh and reindeer.

Below: Lights on the British Columbia Parliament building.



We walked around for a while, then heard an announcement that the Victoria Harbour Ferries were going to be performing a routine to the tune of "The Nutcracker Suite". Just after the announcement a bunch of Santa's walked by, and asked us if we had been naughty or nice, then gave us a handful of mini candy canes. After passing us, they walked right down to the ferries... the Santa's were the captains of the ferries :-) After we watched a bit of the ferry ballet (basically they just rode around in circles while the Nutcracker song was being played) we were pretty hungry so we went to dinner at "The Old Spaghetti Factory". It was a delicious meal, with some of the best bread that I've ever tasted :-)

Below: We saw several eagle sculptures like the one pictured here, with different designs painted on the wings. Some of them were quite striking. For more information about these sculptures, visit http://www.eaglesinthecity.com/





Above: Barb has a Honda Element, too :-) It was cool seeing our cars parked side by side!

The next day we went for a walk on one of the local beaches and found some really amazing driftwood. Some of the pieces were almost whole entire trees... and pretty big trees at that! I asked Barb to take my picture next to the one pictured below, so you could see how big it was.





On my last evening on Vancouver Island we went to a different beach to watch and photograph the sunset. We found a nice, rocky beach with a panoramic view of The Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Olympic Mountains beyond. As it got darker we could also see the city lights from Victoria down the shore. We saw a lot of kelp on this beach that had been washed up during high tide... some of the pieces looked like giant snakes. I didn't do as much shooting in British Columbia as I did previously on this trip, but that's okay as it felt really good to slow down for a couple of days and just relax a bit. I have a lot of stops yet to make on this trip, so a couple of slow days were definitely welcome!

Thanks, Barb, for offering to have me come and visit, and for showing me around beautiful Vancouver Island! Your kindness is much appreciated and will not be forgotten :-)

The Olympic Mountains

Another fascinating area of Olympic National Park is the mountains... perhaps best represented by Hurricane Ridge, which is so named because of the high winds that are common there. I thought that my visit to the ridge wasn't going to be very interesting, as when I left the nearby town of Port Angeles, the sky was covered with clouds from one horizon to the next. As I drove up the road to the ridge and got closer and closer to the summit, however, the clouds got thinner and soon I was above the clouds! Along the last two miles of the road the sky was clear, blue and sunny. When I got to the top there was a LOT of snow, and absolutely NO wind! It was quite a treat to visit the summit on such a clear, calm day.





I only had a little time to spend at the summit, as I was planning on catching the 4:00 ferry to British Columbia. So, after snapping a few pictures it was time to head back down. Not long after I started back down the road I was again below the clouds, and returned to the world of gray skies.





Above: The snowbanks here were even higher than they were at Mt. Rainier!



Above and below: With an annual snowfall of around 400 inches, it takes some serious heavy-duty equipment to keep the road open. Pictured above is a road grader with a large v-plow blade attached to the front. Pictured below is one of the specialty snowblowers that they use to help keep the road open.