We woke before 6:00 a.m. to a dark sky full of stars. Cassiopeia, the Big and Small Dippers, Orion, and others were still on hand for admiration from our cozy lair. Under the blanket, we were fantastically warm, while the room we were taking refuge in was pretty darned cold; we’d left the windows open overnight.

Today, we check out of Ocean Haven by the sea. Typically, we are quick to exit a place and get on with the adventure, but here on our precarious cliffside, this is the adventure. We’ll pack, clean up, and otherwise get ready to leave, but we’re taking this right to 11:00 to enjoy every minute and absorb every detail.

It’s 7 minutes before we’re supposed to be gone, but I needed to jot down a note and snap a few photos to reinforce the memories of one of the more perfect places we’ve ever had the luxury to enjoy. We leave on a sunny day with a calm blue ocean that stretches as far as the eye can see. We’ll miss this little cabin by the sea and long for the day we might return. Remote Self-Isolation has never been so good.

There are times on vacation when what was intended on paper is altered by the circumstances of where the reality of the moment takes us. There are other times when I don’t make hard plans at all, as familiarity with a location or the desire for serendipitous experiences rule the day. Then there’s the conflict between the two where something was reserved and is now fixed unless we walk away from the money spent or we’d like to carve time out to do something we just learned of, but we are here on one of the two days that thing is closed. This is one of those times where I wish for flexibility, but the adjustment of things is now impossible. What I’m referring to is our time here at Ocean Haven; if we could cancel the rest of our lodgings and the Shags Nest weren’t booked solid, we’d be quite happy to stay right here.

Rarely have we planted ourselves in a location for an extended period of time and when we have, we had busy schedules that took us into a myriad of activities and sights and kept us running from dawn to sundown. The three days in Gold Beach, followed by the five days here in Yachats, removed us from the stressors arising from surviving in 2020. I’ve had to let go of what I might have done and seized on the opportunity to follow a plan of no plan. For eight days, it didn’t matter what we got done or where we went. Meeting family could have happened on any 1 of 3 days from morning till night; it could have been 30 minutes or 3 hours.

This flexibility has been great as we have not been rushed to accomplish anything at all. Sure, there’s a mild disappointment that the writing exercise I had in mind has not materialized yet, but then again, I feel disconnected from the ongoing insanity of our political and pandemic situation that was pursuing me while in Phoenix. With another full week up here on the coast, I might still get around to that writing, but I’m also prepared for a reality where that doesn’t happen, and I’ll just try to keep dumping whatever comes to mind here on the blog.

Everyone is wearing masks in Oregon. Everywhere we go, nobody is without one. Our first days on the coast we were extremely isolated and didn’t see many people. By now, we’ve seen a good number of Oregonians, and at every corner, masks are ubiquitous. We now keep them around our neck to pull them up quickly when we are in town. People outdoors on trails are masked up; if they are going to pass you walking down the street, they scramble to pull their masks on. Half the shops we’ve been in have a small table with hand sanitizer, while a couple even offer complementary masks. Here at the Bread & Roses Bakery in Yachats, the person at the counter following our transaction offered the two of us a couple of squirts of hand sanitizer, which simply felt polite. Regarding Caroline’s victory pose with a loaf of bread, she’s German, which should tell you everything.

Just before this stop for a pastry and the loaf of “Bremen Bread,” we were getting some fish and scallops to go from the Luna Sea Fish House. This was our second visit, and I’d bet a dollar that next week when we are heading back down the coast, we’ll be eating here once again. I’d like to point out that although it’s relatively cold, we’ve seen more than a few restaurants that come outside to take your order, run back inside to process your payment, and then bring your food out to you. Finally, our old favorites, Dutch Bros., have signs at the drive-thru’s that they’d appreciate customers wearing a mask when they pull up to the window; we’ve not seen the best compliance with that request.

While we waited until 11:01 to leave Ocean Haven we still have about 5 hours left before we can check-in at the Moolack Shores Inn that is only 24 miles up the coast north of Newport. So, of course, one of the things we’re going to do is take advantage of one of the supposed last sunny days of this trip and take some long walks on the beach.

This particular stretch is called the Governor Patterson Memorial State Recreation Site and is in Waldport. It’s November, it’s still in the 40s out here, though it’s warming up fast and Caroline has her shoes off so she can walk in the surf, the very cold surf. We’re at a point where there’s a lot of uncertainty if we’ve been to a particular place on a prior trip; some stand out clear as day, while others have some ambiguity if we’ve visited before. Caroline had a great idea for a project where we collate the other 19 travels here in Oregon into a meta-map that pinpoints everywhere we can verify a stop.

While the sign isn’t as sexy as a view of the beach or as dramatic as a towering cliffside, these visual guides to trailheads full of warnings and even dog poop bags are seen nearly everywhere. I probably take them for granted these days, though I always try to photograph them as we start a walk so I can better identify our photos once the day comes to an end and I forget where we were.

This smartphone photo was taken for Facebook but as I was scouring the other 153 DSLR photos I took today to find the 14 that best represented the day, I realized that I’ve not posted very many selfies on this trip. Photos of the two of us started being shot “selfie-style” about 20 years ago when people didn’t know how to operate our new digital cameras. While I’ve been getting some nice comments on my COVID hair, I’ve been reluctant to take photos of myself as my head looks kind of wild, but we still need photos of the two of us, so here’s this one.

It’s bright out here and feels hot. While only about 55 degrees (13 Celsius), it’s pretty toasty here in the sun. There are no profound insights to report, no photos of jellyfish as we don’t see any, and the shorebirds are not very abundant.

What I’d give to see the world through her eyes. I don’t even know if colors are perceived the same way I see them. I busy myself looking at the environment for photographic opportunities while Caroline will just stand there and look into the sea. As we walk along the shore, certain colors and shapes of things stand out to her and will inspire her to pick the object up to examine it; what qualities is she looking for? I don’t walk in the surf in November because the water is bone-chilling cold, well, to everyone except her and some kids who seem impervious to such trivialities. The one thing I can easily pick up on from my wife is when she looks at me after an extended session of communing with whatever it was she was staring at and she’s got the look of, “I need a hug!”

Before we knew it, or about 4 hours after we left Yachats, we were passing through Newport. We kept on going beyond the obligatory Dutch Bros. stop in town; there was nothing else to do here. Briefly, we pulled over to examine some real estate listings in Depoe Bay, but come on, who’s paying $700,000 to $1.3 million for homes up here? With payments starting at $3,000 a month and up, there’s no way many locals earn enough to buy a home, so are all of these bought as rentals by investors? Enough of this futile search for future possibilities.

We are now at Boiler Bay north of Depoe Bay. The ocean is too calm for the fireworks that are often witnessed here as the ocean crashes into the cliffs and throws frothing water high into the sky but that doesn’t diminish the beauty either.

Speaking of beauty at Boiler Bay. *SIGH*

We are checked in here at the Moolack Shores Inn, our second time staying at this oceanfront little place. It’s very modern, and after the seclusion of the previous week, it feels a bit loud and crowded, but it’s where we are staying for a couple of days before moving further up the coast. This post could have been called “Dawdling 2,” but I don’t want to establish a routine that could influence how we see our next days.

Note: I’ve not made an effort to share our meals as that is relatively mundane; everyone eats. I might have noted this in a previous post, but our rentals all have kitchens as we’d decided to avoid restaurants and a lot of carryout meals to minimize contact with others. There are exceptions, such as the excellent Luna Sea Fish House, a possible stop at Newport Cafe for a little burger, and we’ve discussed stopping at Gallucci’s Pizzeria in Lincoln City; while we’re not really interested in their pizza, we are fixated on a crazy mock-New York-Italian intonation of the name “Gallucci,” which is enough for us to finally succumb to trying it.

Anyway, back to our meals in this footnote. I made a batch of my homemade granola specifically for this trip. In between, we eat scrambled egg dishes with various Chinese veggies and sometimes leftover whatever is thrown in. Lunch has mostly been sandwiches of ham, peanut butter, egg salad, and even fresh chicken salad. Dinners have included seared scallops, grilled walleye, cajun stuffed pork chops, Kadai paneer (a favorite Indian cheese dish of ours), beans, a chicken stirfry, and a Mexican stirfry. Coming up we have corona beans, broiled filet, grilled bratwurst, pasta, Turducken, and finally, spaghetti squash.

I’d like to say that cooking on vacation has added to the sense of isolation, and I don’t mean that in the pandemic sense we’ve been living with, but the being outside of our typical vacation routine. On holidays, we normally eat nearly every meal at restaurants, which at times is nothing more than an extension of being at home, where we’d eat out more often than not. So, while cooking is a new part of our routine at home, it’s now a new part of our travels, and I feel it really adds to the feeling of being away.