Breakfast was down south, so off to Newport we drove. By the way, as stated in the previous posts, these days are either enhanced with extra photos and blathering like the first few days or, like this one you are reading, have come together 13 years after the trip because, for one reason or another, I never got around to posting anything back in the day. While the photos sit comfortably in their cozy digital beds on my hard drive that’s always warm, they are more accessible to Caroline and me when we are out on the road and looking for something connected to a memory. and hope we’ll find some relevant information on my blog. This doesn’t often happen as WordPress doesn’t have a great search engine, but someday, when it does, or my personal A.I. has already cataloged my 1,226,675 words written, the knowledge we seek will be readily available. As for my word count, that was accurate as of 12:55 p.m. here on December 7, 2020.

This is Agate Beach, south of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse in Newport, and yes, that’s frost on the beach. According to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, it was 36 degrees out here, but with the wind, we can distinctly remember it felt a lot colder.

Just a bit of sun is enough to start warming us; well, that and another view of these bridges (Yaquina Bay Bridge in this case) that never fail to impress us.

I’d like to think that the person who designed these was aware of the “road temple” nature of his creations.

Every time we visit the coast during the late fall, we see these scurrying little fellows as they dart in and out of the surf, but we didn’t see them in our most recent visit here at the end of 2020. The Western Snowy Plover is endangered and has been for a long time; I can’t imagine a day when they are never to be seen again. We saw this flock at Seal Rock Beach.

And here are two of the Southwestern Desert Plovers (the “P” is silent). One of them seems more abundant than the other, though you shouldn’t trust me as I’m no ornithologist.

Somebody must have planted this sign personally christening Cristler Lake as such, as there’s nothing on the internet about this place. There is one other photo of it taken by someone a year after we shot this, but that’s it. Welcome to the place that no longer exists.

Yachats might be the first place we wanted to move to here in Oregon, though Bandon would have been a close second. We stopped in town to do our laundry on one of these trips; there’s something about visiting a local laundromat that either endears you or frightens you away – we found it charming. That laundromat is now gone. At The Drift Inn, we first watched and listened to Coin of the Realm Orchestra, playing European folk music. We bought their CD as the music felt like it was the perfect accompaniment to the coast.

I’m not sharing the frightening views that are closer to the edge, but that’s only because I would have had to stop to take those photos, and when close to the edge and losing sphincter control, the last thing I want to do is stop and take a better gander at the precarious spot I’m standing in. So when I get behind the trees with plenty of land between me and the precipice of death, I can attempt to take my shot as long as there’s adequate light to get a fast shutter speed to counter the effect of my shaky knees. View south from Cape Perpetua Lookout Point.

We had passed Sealines Nautical Shop south of Yachats when it was still open and thought we’d visit again on some upcoming visit. That day never came as they closed. Even before this day, when I snapped this photo of the fading boat and pirate, the owner had moved the shop to nearby Seal Rock, but we didn’t know that back then, nor would the place have had the charm of this seaside location. Every time we pass it, we remember fondly this former roadside treasure.

Never met a lighthouse we didn’t like. The other day, when we were visiting Carl Washburne State Park and hiking the China Creek Trail through the rain forest, we didn’t have enough time left in the day to hoof it out here to the Heceta Head Lighthouse, and the next day, the weather was poor. Here on Sunday, the day before we fly home to Phoenix, we are making time to properly visit.

Yep, we even took the tour and were able to pop our heads up for a view through the ancient Fresnel lens.

I have to appreciate how the park service keeps the trees cleared for this view of the lighthouse.

And finally, the Lightkeeper’s Home. Should you ever have an extra $1600 a night lying around to rent the entire house during winter, it can be yours on your next vacation. Otherwise, it’ll be about $1900 a night in prime tourism season.

Here I am, 15 photos into this blog post with nine more images ahead of me, and I’m wondering how I thought it was a good idea to select so many. There were more than 390 photos shot on this day, so as a percentage, I was pretty discriminating. Okay, no, I wasn’t, as there are a lot of crap images in that directory that needed trimming. I can’t be certain without checking all of my other Oregon blog posts over the years, but it seems like this view looking south towards Florence is a recurrent theme.

Our visit today to Bullards Beach State Park piqued our interest in staying in a yurt here, though obviously, we can’t do that on this trip as we already had reservations long ago.

The Coquille River Lighthouse at Bullards is usually open for visits, but sadly, its Fresnel lens is long gone.

Magical Bandon. This year, 2007, was when real estate was booming here, with locals talking of Californians buying up everything. There was serious resentment going on as while some locals benefited from high prices others were noticing that people who called this home year-round were going to be priced out of the market. After the real estate bust the following year, things pulled back, but with vacation rentals and Airbnb being viable investment opportunities, the trend continues with inflated prices. But you can easily see why.

The view from the beaches of Bandon are equally beautiful.

The same goes for what’s on the beach 🙂

Our destination for the evening would be back south in Brookings for another night at Harris Beach State Park and our last night in a yurt during this trip. I don’t believe we ever repeated this feat of staying in a yurt every night of an Oregon road trip, as the occasional shower from the comfort of a motel room seemed like a nice break from the communal showers at the state parks. Anyway, Brookings is still 83 more miles south of here, and instead of wasting precious sunset time, we just hung out in Bandon and enjoyed the view.

If you can’t already tell, the rock closest to the setting sun is Face Rock.

Sure, we still have a couple of hours driving before us, but we’re not leaving until we can no longer see a glimmer of the sun.

It was just a few more minutes after this when we could turn on the heater and start to warm up after a chilly late afternoon at the ocean. We’d do it all over again if we could have added just one more day to our vacation.