After getting caught up with blogging about Monday and Tuesday, combined with some light morning rain on another cold start to the day, it was easy to fall into the mode of “Not feeling it.” Cleaning and grocery shopping felt like better options, so, pictorially, this is the start of the day after work and dinner, on a late-day walk to collect at least a minimum of physical activity. On the cooking front, we’ve been to Newport Cafe a couple of times for breakfast, to Sticks around the corner here in Depoe Bay for their fried halibut and shrimp a few times, Ona in Yachats, Otis Cafe in Lincoln City, Blue Heron Cheese Company in Tillamook, and the Schooner Restaurant in Netarts. We’ve essentially stuck to eating at the house, a good majority of our meals anyway. Today, I made us a Yucatan-style refried black beans side to go with the chicken I roasted for Oaxacan Mole, and that left us with a lot of leftovers. With that stuff put away, we drove down to Wades Creek.

This is what the weather looked like all day, except it’s not raining. It would occasionally drizzle on us with a fine mist but wasn’t such a damper that Caroline didn’t feel the need to pull out Happy McKiteface and push its limits like never before. Seen here, for the first time, is Caroline’s kite at the end of its string.

A good 15 feet above us are these jumbled seafloor shells that were swept up with a volcanic ash flow. I was aiming to get a better photo of the scallop shell at the bottom of the image, which is significantly larger than my hand. Nearby, there was a layer of soil that had tree limbs in it. My first inclination was that they were relics of a different age that had been caught up with a landslide or other volcanic activity, but then I noticed plastic things, like an old plastic cigarette box holder I used to see growing up, old styrofoam such as what was used for coffee cups decades ago, and random plastic pieces that had me realizing that the debris flow was actually what was bulldozed at some point when this road was being built or rebuilt.

Somebody out here knows more about rocks than we do. That is what I realized when I saw laid out on another rock these fragments. How obvious it was that the person cracked open one of the many round rocks found on the beach under the cliffs. Now, in addition to needing to bring the camera, kite, binoculars, sunblock, hats, and phones, we need to bring a geology hammer. My curiosity about such a tool brought me to Estwing and their E30SE Geology Hammer, with its 22-ounce head weight and genuine leather grip for only $58 at Amazon that pairs with the Estwing Rock Pick Sheath for only $18 more.

Sometimes, water spills over the cliff as runoff from places out of sight and far above; at others, water seeps out of cliff faces. In the case of this bed of mosses, various plants, and flowers, enough water remains evenly distributed to the degree that an entire carpet of life has taken hold on a steep cliff that transitions to a softer incline before the rock face is again too steep to support plants. I’m well aware that this is one of those photos where too much is going on and that the amount of details combined with low resolution creates a noisy image, but one I hope gives some idea of how lush this bed of greens looked to us.

It was getting late, but we felt that if we didn’t take advantage of the hot tub as much as possible during our 24-day stay on the coast, we’d regret later that the opportunity was there, but we let things like being tired get in the way. Now, I can’t get the idea of a luxury rock hammer out of my itchy shopping finger that wants to press “Add to cart.”