John Wise

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.

Back when we stayed here in Pacific City, Oregon, for the first time, we had no idea that its “sea stack” is the world’s 4th largest monolith and that the one up the coast at Cannon Beach is the 3rd largest. The 2nd largest is a monolith called Ben Amera in Mauritania, while the largest is obviously Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) in Australia. To be honest, when we stayed in Pacific City in November 2020, I certainly didn’t know the above fact then either (thanks, Internet!). Caroline may have, as she knows everything.

A sunrise walk under clear skies in the grassy dunes at the southern end of town seemed like a good idea.

That good idea only grew larger as the sun came up over the horizon with a stream of fog still hugging the Nestucca River, capturing the golden light of morning.

From our motel to the Haystack Rock down the coast and back will have us walking a little more than 4 miles.

This is the smile that says, “Great day!”

With nothing but time and curiosity driving us forward, we headed inland for some sightseeing.

Without notes, there’s little I can share other than we must have been having an amazing time out here.

Here we are back at Pacific City Beach with an even better view of the 327-foot-tall monolith, but it’s not exactly why we’ve returned.

Our visit just happened to coincide with the Cape Kiwanda Longboard Classic. As we’d never attended a surfing event, this sounded like the perfect way to spend a part of our day that had nothing else scheduled.

Re-entering the water with style. While this may look like great form, the guy is no longer on his board at all and is about to enter the surf, but damn, he looks good.

Time for more sightseeing as we head north. Later today, we have something on the schedule, but that shows up below. The view is from Cape Lookout.

I could share 20 or 30 photos along Netarts Bay I’ve taken over the years; how would one ever get bored of these views?

From Netarts Bay, we turned inland towards Tillamook.

Ah, a late lunch at Blue Heron and the home of smoked brie cheese. I don’t know if we were on a diet or what, but there’s not a photo of us at the Tillamook Cheese Factory where getting an ice cream of one sort or another seems mandatory, especially a local Oregonian berry flavor.

We’ve arrived at the Port of Garibaldi but are too early for our 4:30 appointment; better go check some other things out.

Just 5 miles further up the road is Rockaway Beach.

Trying to write up this entry ten years after the fact, I have this strange fascination with this “other couple’s adventure.” They sure seem to pack each day with the experiences of many.

Two walks along the ocean, a surfing contest, a couple of scenic drives, an iconic cheese shop for lunch, and the day isn’t over yet.

4:30 rolls around, and we’re back at the Port of Garibaldi for some kayaking.

Yes, we’re in a tandem kayak, which works out for me as I’m mildly terrified of deep water. The only problem is that my terror is manifested as panic. I am trying to speak calmly with Caroline, whose every move threatens to make my nightmares come true. That smile up there is the look of control that she now has me exactly where she wants me. Maniacal, isn’t it?

That is fake calm on my face as somehow I was in denial of the fact that had we turned over, I would have had zero experience getting back in a kayak from the water. Worse, I would have been in a state of panic trying to figure out the situation of getting back atop the kayak from the bitter depths of Miami Cove. Fortunately, everything worked out once again, and as I hit dry land, I could thank my lucky stars that I was able to live to see another day.

After dinner at the Fisherman’s Korner restaurant, also in Garibaldi, nothing more of this day is recorded. Our motel was the Harborview Inn down the street for the bargain price of only $69, which has gone up to $119 here in 2021.

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.

My 17,704th day on earth, and while I can calculate the number of days between my birth and this particular day, I cannot offer any idea whatsoever about the number of sunrises I’ve seen. I do know I’ve not seen enough of them as each subsequent sunrise strikes me in such a way that I long for more, never satisfied that I’ve had my fair share. We were out of Portland before dawn as during the majority of our travels, we note prior to our departure when sunrise is so we have a good chance of seeing it. Here in late September, we have 12 hours of light from 6:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., and with such a short day, you can be assured we’ll try to grab every moment of it.

Our first stop today is in Sublimity at the Silver Falls State Park.

This is the largest state park in Oregon, and with 24 miles of trails, we’ll barely see the tiniest fraction of this place today.

What we will see is enchanting enough to satisfy our quotient of required natural beauty for the first part of a vacation day, but it will leave us longing for a return visit someday.

Years after taking this photo, I’m curious how the lighting turned out so well; sure, I had to pump the shadows up to brighten the darkest areas, but I don’t typically capture these dense areas so well.

Broken is beautiful, too. Just because the tree is gone doesn’t mean it’s not serving an important role in the forest.

Habitats are not only homes to the myriad plants and animals; they are fertile grounds for our imaginations.

I’d like to tell you that our next stop is the big reason for coming to Oregon, but there were multiple reasons, and all of them are equally important, including this random stop along the road. While it’s difficult to see in this low-res image, the view we were driving by elicited us to pull over due to the beauty of the landscape in the distance. This seems as good a reason as any for coming to Oregon.

This is the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. While we were in Southern California, in the Long Beach area specifically, we had many opportunities to see the purpose-built hangar that once housed the Spruce Goose, but by the time we reached the United States, the plane had already been dismantled as it never proved to be much of draw for travelers.

Well, it’s an interesting enough piece of history that Caroline and I were willing to make the detour to see this engineering marvel with our own eyes. While we waited for our tour of the Spruce Goose, we explored the rest of the museum. There are plenty of other aircraft here in the museum, including an old SR-71 Blackbird, but like so many other seriously large things in small spaces, it’s really difficult to photograph. We also stuck our heads into a B-17 Flying Fortress and were lucky enough to encounter a WWII Air Force Vet volunteering as a guide.

Then, it was time for the main attraction. So many times, I tried to focus on capturing some small part of the thing that may share a detail that could easily be overlooked. When I was allowed to briefly occupy the very seat Howard Hughes once sat in to fly this plane on its only journey, taking off and landing on water, I thought that the foot pedals likely go unseen and the lighting down there was so interesting that I had to take and share this image.

The scale of this airplane is incredible, but only a tiny fraction of the craft may be explored by us tourists.

Howard Hughes once sat here.

Go west is the popular refrain, and so we did, heading to Pacific City on the coast.

As you can see in the previous photo, we were driving into the fog, and by the time we reached the coast, we were in the thick of it.

Early fall, fog, cold water? That will never stop Caroline from feeling the Pacific Ocean’s water rushing over her feet.

We checked into the Anchorage Motel for the nice low price of only $55 for the night. Checking on the motel ten years later, I see that the cheapest room is now $119.

Caroline’s crazy accurate memory is at work again as she happens to remember that our dinner at the Riverhouse restaurant was the place where I first tried steamers and fell in love with them. Sadly enough, my upbringing was such that things like clams, mussels, and sardines were unliked without even ever having tried them. I was afraid of something I’d never seriously considered eating. Trying and enjoying them only let me know what a fool I was for not confronting my fear.