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.