Before ever arriving in this lush coastal forest setting, Caroline and I left Depoe Bay this morning for Yachats to fetch a yummy seafood breakfast at the Drift Inn Restaurant. That almost went according to plan, except they didn’t have the Alaska Fish Scramble available, so I opted to have the razor clams as Caroline had ordered. Not a minute later, our server returned and regrettably informed us that those weren’t available either. Breakfast might not have been everything we’d hoped for, though it was A-Okay; what really worked out though, was our server’s endorsement of the nearby Amanda’s Trail, which is where this photo begins our strenuous day hiking up a mountain.

Near the beginning of where we joined the trail, you’ll find a statue dedicated to a Native American Coos woman, one of many indigenous people who in the 1860s were force-marched to what, in effect, was a concentration camp. Reading up on the fate of the coastal tribes is a depressing story that largely feels unresolved here in 2024, which means that we are essentially carrying on the policy mistakes of our ancestors while simultaneously trying to blame long-dead people for these atrocities and absolve ourselves of taking responsibility for our ancestors. [Maybe I’m more hopeful here – I enjoyed reading about the Yachats community coming to terms with the shady past of this area. There have been apologies and attempts of atonement – Caroline]

Walking away from that symbol of shame, the rest of the hike was amazing, enchanting, and spectacular. This poor attempt to describe a fraction of what we felt might be a reflection of my lack of writing skills; it may also be because it is past 9:00 p.m. on Sunday that I got around to trying to capture some of the sense of our forest encounter.

This is an unripe salmonberry during the last 15 seconds of its existence. It may maybe a tragedy that we picked and shared this somewhat sour berry, but it also represented the very first fresh salmonberry either of us has ever tried.

These Fairy Inkcap Mushrooms are considered edible, but since we are no mycologists or even part-time mushroom foragers, the last thing we’d do is sample mushrooms we find along a trail. Photographically, I’ve never wanted to pass them up, but often, they are damaged by those who walk by and kick them over. Someone working at a park years ago told us of those who intentionally destroy other mushrooms, so they can spread spores of the varieties they want to wild cultivate because they have commercial value.

While many mosses are considered edible, they are nutrient-poor, but what they lack in health benefits they more than make up in aesthetic benefits to the landscape. Please don’t go getting the idea that I walk through the forest looking at it as a grocery store, but I can’t help but think about what we don’t know or understand about the various plants that are supposed to grow wild across America and at one time helped sustain Native Americans who clearly had learned how to survive on these lands for 20,000 years before white colonialists arrived about 400 years ago.

While out here, in addition to the wildlife you will see in my photos, we heard the songs of Stellar’s jays, hermit warblers, golden-crowned kinglets, and brown creepers. We also saw woodpeckers and chipmunks. Even later in the day, we saw a pair of bald eagles atop a tree and another flying somewhere unknown to us.

These mushrooms might be the edible sheathed woodtufts, but they might also be Galerina marginata, commonly known as the funeral bell, deadly skullcap, or deadly galerina, which obviously refers to their highly poisonous characteristics.

Starting the trail where we did, as opposed to driving to the top of Cape Perpetua and beginning the hike up there, nearly the entirety of the first part of this hike is uphill, to the tune of about 1,000 feet (305 meters) of elevation gain.

Here we are at the halfway point of the hike up the mountain, crossing a very small stream cutting between the two ridges we were transversing.

Things had been fairly dry along the trail to this point, not desert dry like the version we are more familiar with, but coastal dry. The stream we crossed is just behind Caroline, but this photo wasn’t shared for that reason. Caroline couldn’t believe the size of the leaves growing here, so I asked her to stand there in lieu of a banana for a size comparison.

Speaking of bananas, this slug happened by, but it would have taken forever to reach the stream crossing had we been able to coax it to come with us back down the trail, so Caroline had no choice but to be the stand-in banana.

Stopping to gaze deeply into everything is a surefire way to extend the time required to hike a trail. Somehow, we were even able to tack on at least a couple of extra miles to the 5.7 miles (9km) the full trail is measured at.

With Caroline’s propensity to pick up beach and trail trash, when she saw the pattern of this red-sided garter snake draped over a log, she was busy trying to figure out what the thing was that caught her eye before realizing that she was looking at a snake. At the time, neither she nor I knew what kind of snake it was; we only knew that we were fortunate to have seen it.

Pay attention here; that’s Caroline’s name on this photo; occasionally, we get fairly good results with our phones, and this is one of those times.

So many things in bloom we never get to see during our November trips to Oregon, such as these candy flowers.

Trees often grow strangely in rainforest terrains. More than a few times, we saw trees growing out of other long-gone remnants of those that preceded them. I tried photographing these kinds of parasite growths, but the level of abstraction was undecipherable, and the aesthetic sense one gleans when present is lost in the still image.

We finally made it after hiking up the equivalent of a 100-story building to the Cape Perpetua Overlook. What we are on top of is actually a 45 million-year-old oceanic shield volcano.

From this Stone Shelter built in 1933, one can see 40 miles (64km) out to sea and look up and down the coast for 70 miles (113km), that’s on a clear day.

Talk about being those people; when we left Depoe Bay for Yachats, the only certainty was where we were going for breakfast. Hence, we didn’t bring a seriously necessary item required on 4.5-hour hikes: water. Lucky us, a French-Canadian couple cooking their breakfast high up Cape Perpetua had water in their camper van and were willing to share with us. With no drinking fountain on the mountaintop, it felt stupid of us to have embarked on such a hike so ill-prepared. After a couple of large glasses of water, we were ready to start our downhill trek.

Not an example of a tree upon tree growing, but something weird has happened here. Now try to imagine just how disorienting the other images are that didn’t make the cut for inclusion.

During the last 10 minutes of the hike, the sun finally started peeking through the clouds.

To Caroline’s right is the area where the Amanda statue stands, which is the namesake for the trail that has crushed our knees and left us aching.

Leaving the trail, it was only minutes later that we once again pulled into Ona Restaurant’s parking lot, and although we thought we were stopping for their highly regarded burgers, we both ended up getting the rockfish and chips. With just enough time left, we were able to get back to Waldport, home of the Alsea Bay Bridge, and stop back in at Tidewater Creations for more yarn because one can never have enough yarn, or maybe because it dawned on Caroline that she needed some extra hand-dyed yarn for a particular friend. At the shop, we learned about the local JillyBeanz Ice Cream Shop, which sells candy and ice cream scoops but also was supposed to have a great tiramisu. A treat really felt in order, so we made the stop without regrets.

This is the Alsea River, where it starts to form a bay upon meeting the Pacific Ocean.

Though it was 5:30 and typically later than we’d like to have coffee, we had to stop in at Dutch Bros in Newport to share a cold brew, as it felt like narcolepsy was visiting both of us. Getting back to Depoe Bay with more than three hours of daylight remaining, one could think that we’d head out for sunset, but no chance, our legs were just too tired. We even skipped dinner due to the large late lunch and sweet treats we had indulged in next to the bay, but we didn’t skip a visit to the hot tub to help soothe our achy limbs and sore feet.