Forgotten Oregon II – Day 5

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Disclaimer: This post is one of those that ended up being written years after the experience was had. Sadly, there were no notes taken so whatever is shared here must be extracted from the images and what memories they may have lent us. Fortunately, there was an itinerary still in my directory of travel plans, so that will help with some details. As to why this wasn’t noted or blogged about, I was in the throes of writing/editing my book Stay In The Magic and felt that any other deep writing would derail that fragile effort.

Last night we spent at the Umpqua Lighthouse State Park in the deluxe yurt with its own bathroom and kitchen. While those things are convenient, they take away from the rustic yurts that feel closer to nature. The idea of a TV in one of these defeats the magical sense of place I feel in the single-light-and-rickety-heater type of yurt I prefer. There was no time this morning to linger in the luxury of our temporary abode as we were out with the sunrise so we could tackle the 12 hours of driving required to get to Santa Cruz, California.

The drive is actually 538 miles via Highway 101, and it would be quicker if we took Interstate 5, but that road is every shade of ugly one could imagine. Time is not important; only life is important, such as this great blue heron.

We cannot stop at freeway pullouts for encounters with the ocean, and even if this delays our arrival time this evening, it won’t be the first time we pull into a motel at midnight.

Every so often, we remember to take some of the various seashells we’ve collected on our travels and part with them by returning them to the ocean. Strangely, the seagulls didn’t think we were tossing food into the air for them which is what I expected.

Something else: lightweight seashells don’t travel far when tossing them into the surf we’ve learned. From those shells taken from their place on a shelf at home, this is the final reminder that for a time, they returned us to other visits to a beach somewhere or other. It’s interesting to think that on subsequent visits, the sand we walk upon might include a solitary grain made from this particular shell.

Hmmm, like our seashells rejoining the ocean, did someone throw this old fishing vessel back into the sea so it, too, might break down into its smallest component parts?

Hey, threat of rain, you don’t scare us! We have arrived in late November, knowing full well the tempests with which the ocean gods deliver their fury on these shores at the time of their choosing, and while we are respectful, we are not fearful.

Blink, and you miss this double arch as you speed your way up or down the 101. Plenty of times, we’ve wanted to stop but were already too far past it to feel safe about backing up on the highway. Here, on an early Sunday morning, we are all alone at the overlook and, for the most part, on the road too.

I might be mistaken, but I thought these were liberty caps of the psychedelic kind. No, I don’t just pick any mushrooms with the hope they are something I want them to be; they were left right where they were growing.

Who knows where we are or who even cares as we delay the inevitable of needing to join Interstate 5 because we chose to dawdle next to the Oregon coast?

A final glance back at the ocean with the longing in our hearts that it won’t be long before we return to once again stand in awe of this most perfect stretch of land and sea we’ve visited on so many occasions.

And let’s not forget that it’s fall at this time of year with the ensuant colors that arrive with this season.

Who cares where beauty is found as long as it is found and can be appreciated?

Grabbing desperately for those reminders that will tell us we were in Oregon.

I believe this is scientifically known as a “Cuddle of Shrooms.”

Forgotten Oregon II – Day 4

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Disclaimer: This post is one of those that ended up being written years after the experience was had. Sadly, there were no notes taken so whatever is shared here must be extracted from the images and what memories they may have lent us. Fortunately, there was an itinerary still in my directory of travel plans, so that will help with some details. As to why this wasn’t noted or blogged about, I was in the throes of writing/editing my book Stay In The Magic and felt that any other deep writing would derail that fragile effort.

Yurts, we are in love with yurts. They are the perfect tiny little home away from home. What’s missing, such as the toilet and kitchen, is made up for with character.

It’s always a sad moment when we are done packing the car and cleaning the debris we’ve tracked into the yurt and are about to lock the door. We’ve never stayed in a yurt where we didn’t leave with fond memories of every minute we spent in these canvas palaces by the sea. Just writing this made me run over to the Oregon State Park site, check for availability this coming Thanksgiving 2021, and snag two nights in this exact unit.

Just up the road is Cape Perpetua, but it is what lies below that place atop the mountain, the Devils Churn, that draws me in. Down below, the rushing water crashes into a tiny slice in the earth,  a space too small to contain all of its energy, and so it explodes with the water, trying to make its escape.

I never tire of watching this spectacle and could stand here for hours capturing thousands of photos if it weren’t for Caroline gently dragging me away, reassuring me that hundreds were probably enough. As I went through the directory storing photos from this date, I ended up removing more than 250 images that I deemed unworthy. However, with all the chaos in the churn, it’s not like one could just grab the best image by taking a shot or two.

Part of the trail down to the churn. Next time I’m posting something about the Oregon Coast I should remember to capture the trail as it leads away from the parking lot as it too is a nice sight.

Speaking of nice sights.

That’s the Yaquina Head Lighthouse in the distance. A priceless 1st-order Fresnel lens sits atop its tower; the same type of lens also resides in the Heceta Head Lighthouse I wrote about yesterday.

We’ve been driving north, but somewhere or other up here, we’ll need to turn around as we have another date with a yurt south of Washburne.

Stopping in Depoe Bay to just sit a while and admire the ocean.

And occasionally look over at my wife to smile at our incredible opportunities.

The seagull knows nothing of the enslavement to economic systems, unlike us, who know nothing about the freedom to soar. While the bird cannot describe its beautiful environment, humans are typically hard-pressed to describe what is beautiful in nature.

I took one hundred photos to capture the one that ended up here. I was mesmerized by the flow and patterns the water would take as it piled up against the rocks below me each time it traveled on different pathways as receding water changed the dynamic of the water coming in. With the center column being deeper, a dark emerald color pulled me into depths where that water was mysteriously traveling outside of my purview. I wanted to be a consciousness that is able to flow where the water goes. I want to be the bird that skims over the surface of the waves, just a feather above the churn that threatens to bring it out of flight and into the realm of the fish below. Like the hyphal knot emerging atop mycelium, seeing light for the first time, I want to have my first peek at the universe, but here I am, stuck within my head of preconceptions of my place among the others in my species.

Water is infinite and doesn’t know of its relationships from the Pacific to its distant frozen cousin encased for the past 35,000 years in a glacier; it cannot know of its gaseous form in a cloud hovering over Pavlikeni, Bulgaria, or its fellow molecules about to be sipped as a coffee at a breakfast table anywhere on earth.

I on the other hand, if I try hard, am able to bring myself toward the edge of infinity when writing about what I’m looking at as I explore the internal landscape of language as it’s used to describe phenomena outside of me.

To the rocks of Siletz Bay, life is an imperceptibly slow crawl into disappearance. Over many thousands of years, they’ve grown smaller as their exteriors flake away under the barrage of the elements. I’m like those rocks in that I, too, am flaking away, but I’m aware of my disappearance as it happens in the comparative blink of an eye. Not satisfied with only knowing my fixed place, I have to travel my imagination and constantly feed it with all forms of stimuli as I try to understand the peculiarity of self-awareness that the water and rocks may never know.

I’m nearly always astonished at how little awareness my fellow humans bring to the game of life. Here we are in Lincoln City at the local streetside glassworks, and as I look at this float, it is the result of our ingenuity to bring sand, lime, and soda ash together under an incredible amount of heat that has allowed us to protect ourselves from the elements, store fluids, restore our vision, look into the heavens, and examine things we cannot see otherwise.

Where’s my bag of infinite knowledge when I want to know more about the 22° halo I’m looking at? Oh yeah, with the help of community knowledge shared on the internet, I know that this is from high-altitude hexagon-shaped ice crystals that, as light passes through them, bend the light at a 22° angle.

When did these rocks fall down? When were they formed? What minerals are present? What other people lived here 500 years ago? What are we leaving for people 500 years from now that will tell of our relationship and understanding of what we were looking at?

These barnacles won’t be telling the story, nor will the average person who might have had the ability, but instead, they are locked into artificial existences that never ask them to describe their world as much as it demands they consume banalities in their lonely isolation.

Wherever you are on this planet, what if it were just you and a friend looking out at the last sunset ever? What might you tell a future generation of beings of what you saw, experienced, and desired? What if, to a future generation of intelligent beings, the dreams, knowledge, and aspirations of a former species consisting of billions of people could be understood in minutes? What will we have collectively offered up for the incredible opportunity to have been standing there looking into existence?

Humanity has the opportunity to be 7 billion lighthouses to future generations, but instead, we trade our time on earth to effectively be nothing more than 6.9 billion specimens of bacteria buried in the soil beneath the lighthouse, hidden from view and unknown to those captivated by the shining light.

Forgotten Oregon II – Day 3

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Disclaimer: This post is one of those that ended up being written years after the experience was had. Sadly, there were no notes taken so whatever is shared here must be extracted from the images and what memories they may have lent us. Fortunately, there was an itinerary still in my directory of travel plans, so that will help with some details. As to why this wasn’t noted or blogged about, I was in the throes of writing/editing my book Stay In The Magic and felt that any other deep writing would derail that fragile effort.

Yesterday, we were hoping for favorable weather this morning, and here we are at the beginning of our trail with the sun streaming in. Not that it will get far, as we are in a rainforest at Carl G. Washburne State Park south of Yachats, Oregon.

Funny how I can gaze upon a mushroom, just one more mushroom among the thousands I’ve seen in my lifetime, and still I find it enchanting. I’m sitting in a coffee shop as I write this, listening to the same old bologna I’ve heard countless times, and it’s rubbing me in such a way that I’m considering running away. The mushroom is never able to share its stupidity, but a human is all too willing to demonstrate that it’s dumber than a fungus planted on a forest floor. How should I write about the serenity and beauty of a place when surrounded by the chaos and ugliness of those others within my species?

Looking back at these trips I have to lament that I wasn’t willing to write of my impressions and take inspiration from the environment at the time. Mostly, I was content to have the photographic memories as I saw myself as having just enough skills to take those, but my writing was still in its nascent stages; well, it still is, isn’t it? All the same, even rudimentary notes help bring back things that are long forgotten. The lesson is, always take too many photos and at least write some things down on every vacation day you ever take.

Taken before the days, we understood that newts excrete a toxin when stressed. I tend to want to believe that Caroline’s tender touch doesn’t stress the newt, but then again, if something 6,480 times bigger than me picked me up, even if it was gingerly, I’d be excreting all over myself and the creature holding me.

My half-educated guess is that these are Stropharia caerulea, also known as Blue Roundheads, and are not edible.

I believe I’ve posted this exact view more than a few times, and why wouldn’t I? It’s just perfect in every way.

I’ve tried time and again to photograph this bridge, and after years of not looking at this particular image, I realize that using my 10-22mm lens I was able to capture the angle I was looking for. If I was a more dedicated photographer, I’d travel with the full complement of lenses I own, but the truth is that I’ve never grown beyond believing I’m taking run-of-the-mill snapshots of average quality, so my effort is what it is.

As I stare at this image, contemplating what to write, I think about the smallest mushroom I see there on the left, just under the cut of this tree. It’s obviously not as small as it could be because, at some point, just after it left the spore stage, it probably did not have a mushroom cap and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that. Then there are the spores the tree caught of the moss, growing like a vertical carpet under the mushrooms; I failed to note what direction all of this growth was facing to learn more about the lighting conditions where these plants thrive. Studying those aspects and admiring the reflections on the wet mushrooms I start to take notice of the blurred background and how appealing it is to my eye.

Sure, everybody should see this sight with their own eyes, but today, I’m happy there was nobody else on the trail who would have been a part of this scene. The sunbeams, shadows, greenery, and nearly imperceptible amount of fog are just right.

I could have just posted a single photo of our day on the central coast of Oregon and shared that we’d hiked in this particular state park, visited a lighthouse, and experienced a magnificent sunset, but instead, I’m inclined to overshare, causing these brief notes where I really don’t share anything of value at all.

Where’s Waldo? She’s there in the shadows, but who really cares about her standing back there, hardly seen as what I really wanted to share was the lush green carpet and those sunbeams that beg me to forever remember how mysterious they are and how they change the character of a forest.

Sometimes, the carpet of moss appears as a fur coat on the limbs of trees. I wonder if I really need to point out that this is far more elegant on older trees where the growth has been accumulating for years. Sadly, when we move through a forest, clear-cutting the life that we need to harvest for our own financial gain proceeds indiscriminately, giving no care at all about the wisdom in the forest that comes in the form of trees such as this.

For fungus, there is no importance of time on display as they quickly come and go with their impact experienced in mere moments but they do represent the symbiotic nature of a healthy environment where things are allowed to remain undisturbed by our sense of propriety.

Another fungus cutting its own path into my reality. I suppose I can be happy that this thing isn’t gifted with a kind of mobility that would make it the stuff of nightmares.

Today, we took the longer option regarding our hike. Typically, we’ve taken the Hobbit Trail down to the beach, but with the weather seeming favorable, we are taking a left towards the lighthouse.

Heceta Head Lighthouse at the end of the trail.

Is it enough to say wow here?

We managed to be here right in time for a tour of this 117-year-old fixture on the Oregon coast.

Who pays for the repairs and upkeep of these iconic treasures? We, the general public, do with our paid admission as we carve out time from our vacation to crawl up these towers. When we visit and buy something from the gift shop, we fund repairs and pay for the people who protect the buildings from vandalism. Nature is already a tough visitor, wearing down the structure that lives year after year under the battering ram of weather. I’d imagine that the water seeping through or down these walls would ultimately make Heceta Head unvisitable. Thanks to everyone who toils to preserve lighthouses.

I can’t remember the specifics about the couple acting as caretakers here and how and why they let us in for a quick tour, but I’m forever grateful. It turned out that the lighthouse was closed back in August 2011, just a few months before our arrival but major renovation work that would shut the facility for the next two years hadn’t begun yet, and so we were “snuck in.” Persistent enthusiasm must be good for something.

A quick look at the ocean and it was time to head up the road back to our yurt that we’d booked for two nights. As we walked along the street, oh, how we wished that someone driving past and seeing how worn down we were would have had room to pick up three strangers and take us back to Washburne. No luck; we hoofed it.

Instead of walking along the highway the entire distance we turned back in towards the China Creek Trail, where it emerges at the highway to head over to the Hobbit Beach Trail. We should have gone to the beach and walked back the rest of the way, but we were tired and hungry.

But not so tired and hungry that I couldn’t stop and take even more photos of the lovely mushrooms.

After a short rest and some food, we crossed the highway to the Washburne stretch of beach to bask under the sunset.

Sure, it’s more of the same, but I couldn’t choose between the two.

As a matter of fact, you’ll notice that this photo is similar to the one below Caroline, but notice the position of the sun in the sky here, while in the last photo, it’s about to dip below the horizon.

The only reason this cute photo of Caroline is here is to have some visual discontinuity in my two sunset photos.

Looking through these photos nearly ten years after I took them, I can’t help but dream of our next visit to the Oregon Coast, even though we just spent three weeks up there this past November. Being as enamored by this stretch of America as I am, I’ll likely never understand the fascination with California’s less-than-stellar coast south of here.

Forgotten Oregon II – Day 2

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Disclaimer: This post is one of those that ended up being written years after the experience was had. Sadly, there were no notes taken so whatever is shared here must be extracted from the images and what memories they may have lent us. Fortunately, there was an itinerary still in my directory of travel plans, so that will help with some details. As to why this wasn’t noted or blogged about, I was in the throes of writing/editing my book Stay In The Magic and felt that any other deep writing would derail that fragile effort.

There are times when we take photos so late in the day that they end up in the next day’s image folder because of their date stamps. That is at least what I thought about the photo above, but sure enough, it was taken early in the morning of our trip north. The sign should be the giveaway of why we drove to this particular city.

I just lost 30 minutes of writing because I felt the need to track down the location where this photo was taken, and it turns out that it is “Area 101” in Laytonville, California. Other than the obvious that it is a roadside attraction, it also has been part of a Marijuana grow and was the location of 2010’s Emerald Cup, a cannabis-related music festival. It seems as if they are now called Healing Harvest Farms. I can tell you that we’ve stopped here many a time to appreciate the psychedelic nature of it all (and the clean facilities nearby – Caroline).

Twenty years of passing through the Redwoods and we’ve yet to go into Confusion Hill, but someday we will.

It’s hard to stop at the cheesy tourist attractions that dot the road through here, even though many of them are from a bygone era and won’t be here forever. The draw of the road to see the trees, the lighting, and our excitement at getting up to the coast are usually so overwhelming that we just keep on driving with the idea that “next time,” we’ll stop. Hey, we did eventually visit the Trees of Mystery with its 49-foot statue of Paul Bunyan and a 35-foot statue of Babe the Blue Ox. And just last year (I’m writing this in 2021, remember?), we visited the Prehistoric Gardens near Port Orford, Oregon.

I’d like to say I didn’t want to go there, but the longer I looked at this image, trying to figure out what to write, the more I saw my wife standing in the vagina of the tree. Sadly, I apparently cut off the clitoris up at the top, and while the nub in front of Caroline’s right knee could easily be seen as the butthole, I can’t explain the tear adjacent to it unless I start exploring the idea of trees fisting other trees. [John clearly doesn’t understand female anatomy – Caroline]

Caroline was probably thinking of cutting that last line, but I hope to reassure her that nobody will ever see these old blog posts that are buried a thousand posts deep. Maybe the reader is incredulous that I would vulgarize a beautiful image of nature with my wife wearing her alien pink snail penis hat penetrating the interior of the tree vulva; well, blame the internet, as I’m sure I found something along these lines on some porn site. By the way, don’t even ask where I go for my porn. At this point, I should also come clean that whenever we pass the Trees of Mystery site we always marvel at Babe’s really big blue balls.

Nope, nothing phallic or carnal here, just big trees and a view I find appealing.

What’s up with these prisons in beautiful settings? Like San Quentin Prison on the San Francisco Bay, here’s the High Rock Conservation Camp in the Redwoods, where inmates who help with things like fire suppression are housed. I don’t know why I find it wrong that prisoners should live in places unaffordable to average mortals instead of being housed in places like the Chuckawalla Valley State Prison off the 10 Freeway on our way home near Blythe, California.

Trees in the fog like gorillas in the mist, something I could look at all day, not that I’ve ever personally watched gorillas in the mist, but I would like to.

While we were just at the coast yesterday, there’s something about arriving at the northern coast that feels like we finally reached the ocean.

Late fall, early winter days at the ocean when the beach can be all yours.

Close-up of the alien pink snail penis hat, or should that be an alien snail-penis hat in pink? [Clearly a pussy hat way before its time – Caroline]

Considering that there were probably less than 50 people on this isolated beach over the intervening seven years, it’s pretty dangerous out here.

You can tell we’ve reached Oregon; the sun is gone, the beach is replaced with rocks, and there are no smiling people in the photo.

A sign you will NEVER see at Newport Beach in Southern California.

We are staying at Carl G. Washburne State Park in a yurt this evening with wishes for good weather tomorrow as we are planning a really long hike.

Forgotten Oregon II – Day 1

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Disclaimer: This post is one of those that ended up being written years after the experience was had. Sadly, there were no notes taken so whatever is shared here must be extracted from the images and what memories they may have lent us. Fortunately, there was an itinerary still in my directory of travel plans, so that will help with some details. As to why this wasn’t noted or blogged about, I was in the throes of writing/editing my book Stay In The Magic and felt that any other deep writing would derail that fragile effort.

If you’ve read the previous two travel posts that were titled “Forgotten…” you might have noticed that there was a Day Zero entry that this one is missing. Well, there wasn’t a single photo of our drive from Phoenix, Arizona, to Goleta, California, where we had booked a room at the Motel 6 on Calle Real.

The reason that I’m pointing out that we stayed on Calle Real is that right across the street was where we wanted to take the person traveling with us for breakfast, Backyard Bowls. We fell in love with their acai bowls and hot porridges on previous visits to our great aunt and uncle Burns, who lived right up the street.

We have 485 miles scheduled for today’s drive, but since most of it will be on Highway 1 and knowing how slow we will be, had we not staged ourselves on the north side of Los Angeles, we’d never get to Oregon. Not that we are going to arrive in Oregon at the end of this day but it is the main destination of this vacation.

With us is Caroline R. I’m leaving her relatively anonymous as she represents another friendship we wrecked. We were out here to share coastal Highway 1 with her since, if my memory serves me, she’d never been out on this stretch of scenic beauty. So, it was obligatory that we’d stop at a few key locations for her to visit the more iconic places, according to John and Caroline anyway.

The elephant seals are from a colony hanging out in the shadow of the closed Piedras Blancas Motel.

Maybe you are wondering now that I’ve baited you, how did we dash another friendship upon the rocks?  It was during this, our first trip with Caroline R., that we learned that we really weren’t compatible traveling with her, but a larger can of worms was looming on the horizon. We’d already invited her to join us on a whitewater trip into the Yukon and Alaska to raft the Alsek River the following summer, and it was at the end of that rafting trip that everything unraveled. After the Oregon trip, we tried, again and again, to let her know that it was okay if she felt like backing out of Alaska, but she never picked up on the clues, and we were too chickenshit to tell her that, while we loved meeting with her and her husband in Phoenix, we felt that traveling with her was unbearable to us. But why, John? For some people, it seems they are more comfortable sharing what they don’t like than what they do like. We, on the other hand, don’t need others to constantly point out where things could be better. Who cares about those details when you are where you are in the circumstances as they are?

That’s Caroline R. behind my Caroline W. One wants to have fun while the other has none.

Like all things, that too will pass; the clouds will clear, and we’ll take what we need from this trip. After all, our travels are about seeing the cup overflowing, as it’s never half full.

In the multi-verse of John, like two mirrors in a roadside bathroom, you can choose to see the version of your choice. If I’m just the simple reflection of surface John, I might have been wearing my Dumas persona (French spelling of Dumbass), but when you catch me about four layers deeper, there’s a different version, maybe the one Caroline fell in love with. That’s not an invitation for anyone else to fall in love with me, just me acknowledging that nobody ever really knows which version of a person they are looking at.

This version of Caroline is the anti-window one. You see (well, actually, you don’t), the Big Creek Bridge of Big Sur is right behind her. Most people want to capture the bridge; we’ve done that plenty of times, but I never can have enough of that smiling face.

You could ask Caroline at any time if she’s had enough of gazing out on a silvery ocean, and I can assure you she’d tell you, “Never!”

These sweets on display are not even my favorites from the Big Sur Bakery. I suppose a favorite hardly matters as the truth of it is I don’t care what I have from here because when we stop for a pastry and coffee, whatever we’re having is an instant favorite. Is it really all that special? Of course not, but the setting and the location make everything here absolutely amazing.

The trail to Garrapata Beach because we will “never” travel the Big Sur coast and not stop here unless the weather is so bad that we can’t be inconvenienced.

This is building up to be a perfect day.

These are the kind of bird photos I typically only get to shoot when in an aviary, my lucky day.

It might be difficult to see accurately in this photo, but the crest of the wave is well over my head as I stand on the beach. Due to the nature of the shore break, waves come in big here and just as quickly go right back out, but as they crash, they create the roar of a freight train. Each one I look at that towers over me has me thinking that this is the sneaker wave I should fear.

We spent just enough time at Garrapata to see all things big and small, but will have to get to driving as we still have 265 miles ahead of us.

With the sun setting before 5:00 p.m. at this time of year, it might not be all that late, but at this point, we were still two and a half hours from Willits, California.

Is That A Finger In My Coffee?

JWise Photo of the Day

Madam, would you please remove your finger from my drink?

There’s a good reason my favorite coffee shop is my favorite, it’s because of things like this. Not only was Tori’s finger on my coffee cup, but it’s also still there stuck under the lid. What was a bit gross, is that it was dripping into my no-foam sugar-free soy latte. Interestingly, it tasted kind of lemony. What it smelled like? I’ll leave that to your imagination, but I will tell you, it didn’t smell like bacon. Where’s Tori’s finger going next? She wouldn’t want to know.