Yet another gorgeous day! With only 45 miles to drive between campsites today, we arrived at Carl Washburne State Park quite early. Plans were that we would hike to the Heceta Head Lighthouse the next morning, but as we were here so early and who knew what tomorrow would bring, we opted to take the hike today. Immense was the beauty we walked into. The greens were electrified, misty light rays poked through towering trees, and mushrooms dotted the landscape. Walking along the trail, there were parts of the forest where one could imagine green snow had fallen overnight, carpeting the forest in emerald hues. It seemed rare to see two of the same types of mushrooms; everywhere we looked, a new, bigger, redder, whiter mushroom would poke through the moss. Our walk became a crawl; hours passed, literally, before we made it to the fork that would take us either to the lighthouse or to the beach. With early sunsets at this time of year, we opted for the beach route. Low tide greeted Caroline and me on a broad, flat, sandy beach reflecting the golden sun and, further north, exposed tide pools with anemones, starfish, barnacles, and mussels. Another perfect day.

That’s how this blog post sat here for over a dozen years until here in late 2020. While mulling over our previous trips to the Oregon Coast after our return from our Pandemic Dictated Remote Self-Isolation Vacation, I noticed a serious void of photos on the blog while a number of worthwhile images existed that could have been posted. The bandwidth options back then severely limited what we could share, so a paragraph of text and a relatively low-res image per day was all I could deliver. But now I can do a little updating and some digital housekeeping by bringing in more details to the visual narrative of the trip wherever possible.

The original post let go of the morning spent walking out near the Umpqua Lighthouse area and jumped to Carl Washburne due in part to what I said in the paragraph above but also due to the fact that I wasn’t all that comfortable with writing yet. It probably took me as long to write 100 words back then as it now takes me to write 500 but that’s just a wild-ass guess.

We’re in the sand dunes of Reedsport, heading north. I should point out that the fleece Caroline is wearing she picked up at Monterey Bay Aquarium down in California, one of our absolute happy places on Earth. The shirt was from Yarn School in Harveyville, Kansas, where she had learned to spin yarn. Also, note the GPS in her right hand; the world had just been introduced to the first smartphones at that time, but it would still be half a dozen years before we’d get our first one. All the waypoints we took back then have sat around worthless in some directory I’m too lazy to find and delete.

The China Creek Trail at Carl Washburne State Park. We had passed by on a couple of prior occasions, but someone had assured us that it was one of the greatest trails on the entire coast. After this, I don’t believe we ever missed an opportunity to walk it again and again.

The silly writings of enchanted forests may not be so silly after all, as this would qualify as just that to me.

From this first visit to all subsequent visits, I’ve never tired of seeing the variety and often bizarre beauty found in these fungi.

Surprises pop up all the time. I have to admit that I didn’t make my best effort to effectively photograph our time in the rainforest, probably because I was so overwhelmed by it all.

The Hobbit Trail brought us to the beach.

Caroline walking barefoot on the beach at Carl Washburne State Park.

Happy as clams.

Normally, we find these guys gutted and often upside down after a seagull cleans it out. I can no longer remember if this guy was stunned, alive, dead, partially consumed, and abandoned on our approach, but I do know that we didn’t make a meal of it.

Nor do we eat sand dollars.

We were in no hurry to go anywhere this afternoon as our lodging was right here across the street at Carl Washburne in one of two yurts in the park.