Special Today – More Oregon Tide Pool!

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Welcome to the next day of tide pooling, this time on the north side of Fogarty Creek Beach, still in Depoe Bay. Where we are standing, you would normally see us about three or four feet below the ocean’s surface, but through the magic of planet rotation and the way tides work, we and all the sea life around us are out in the open air. Good for us, not so great for life that depends on living in water. Something else that’s different: we woke to a foggy coast.

Sea stars during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Just in case you had difficulty identifying those colorful speckled dots in the first photo, they are sea stars. We no longer call them starfish because the idiots among us were confusing these invertebrates with those things that have gills, tails, fins, and other stuff that make fish fish. Strangely enough, sea stars are related to sand dollars, sea urchins, and, most peculiarly, sea cucumbers.

Crab at low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

This crab must have thought he was the cock of the walk and immune from the gulls while he strutted his stuff like he was still under ten feet of water. That was until the seven Mennonite girls from California decided the crab needed prodding by their feet to make it do tricks. Caroline swept in, grabbed the “toy” from the young ladies, and put it in a nearby pool where it could regain its crabby senses.

Low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Slurp, guzzle, crunch as another mussel bites the dust, I mean the everted stomach that intruded into a shell to liquefy breakfast.

Low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

I tasked Caroline to identify an area she felt best represented an average-density location of crustaceans. Her job was to count, to the best of her ability, the individuals per square meter (ind/m²) – she’s German and still knows the metric system better than our idiotic Imperial system of measurement nonsense. Using a quadrat sampling system she had learned in grade school, she came up with a number that suggests that there were approximately 800 animals per square meter. Then, isolating this part of the shore using an app that tells us the total surface area of a delineated space marked by coordinates we sent in using our phone’s GPS coordinates, we were able to determine that this 150-meter by 40-meter cluster of rocks with a total surface area of 36,000 square meters is holding about 28,800,000 mollusks and invertebrates, not counting tiny baby mussels, sea stars, and barnacles that were too small to include in our rapid count. Considering that an average mussel weighs 25 grams, a barnacle about 3.5 grams, and a sea star 300 grams, and considering their ratio on these rocks, we derived the total weight of creatures before us as at an incredible 1,749,570 kilograms, of which under 272,155 kilos are edible.

Chitons during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Obviously, this wall of six chitons and the less-than-ideal density of barnacles skews our figures and wrecks the nutritional value calculations we were considering sharing in the next photo.

Low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

This is a testament to how far out to sea the low tide has allowed us to venture: it’s common knowledge that sea palm kelp only grows at depths of 100 feet or more below sea level. It’s a safe bet to say we could be a mile deep.

Caroline Wise at Fogarty Creek Beach during low tide in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Proof that we are more than a mile below the normal surface of the ocean.

Sea star during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Munch, nosh, glug, and gargle.

Lined chiton during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Yesterday, I presented the last part of the day with black & white photos; this image and the three below are the results of using an advanced digital potato to capture sea life that would have otherwise not been witnessed by my readers. You see, DSLR cameras like my trusty Canon T7i were not built to operate under extreme conditions such as these depths, while the Samsung Android S22 can perform down here. Sure, they are mediocre photos, but consider the rarity of seeing the seldom-captured lined chiton. This specimen was only about 3cm long.

Sea slug during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

The rare yellow oblique-sea slug. My apologies for peppering it before photographing it; I was about to pop this baby into my gullet…after first everting my stomach. While carefully studying the sea stars, I might have learned a valuable lesson from this creature we shared our last common ancestor with about 550-600 million years ago. If our distant ancestors could do it, so can I.

Lined chiton during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

If you think I turned the image of the other Lined chiton into landscape mode, you must doubt my integrity.

Low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

This is a jewel display at Poseidon’s version of a Tiffany store. About now, I’m seriously considering my next incarnation and think coming back as a gooseneck barnacle wouldn’t be a bad thing. I attach myself to some coral or rock for a life among the sea’s treasures and thrust out my cirri to catch whatever food is passing me by, and it’s all free. Don’t confuse the cirri with a penis; the former are feather-like appendages composed of six pairs of jointed, hair-like structures used for capturing plankton and other small sea life. Speaking of penis, while it wouldn’t be as bizarrely long as my acorn barnacle relatives’ tool of manhood, when it does loll out of my peduncle, it would still be long enough to visit my neighbors: life would be good.

Gooseneck barnacles during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

I think I might be obsessed with barnacles.

Later that day, I was reading something else about barnacles due to the more exotic, possibly very old gooseneck barnacles we saw over at the Devils Punchbowl. They were dead and seriously long (photo below), but in identifying them, I came across an article from iNaturalist.org with a footnote credit to “American Heritage Dictionary. Retrieved 2011-12-04,” about the origins of the word barnacle, and it was too interesting not to include:

In thirteenth-century England the word “barnacle” was used for a species of waterfowl, the barnacle goose (Branta leucopsis). This bird breeds in the Arctic, but winters in the British Isles so its nests and eggs were never seen by the British. At the time, it was thought that the gooseneck barnacles that wash up occasionally on the shore had spontaneously generated from the rotting wood to which they were attached, and therefore, that the geese might be generated similarly. Credence to the idea was provided by the tuft of brown cirri that protruded from the capitulum of the crustaceans that resembled the down of an unhatched gosling. Popular belief linked the two species and a writer in 1678 wrote “multitudes of little Shells; having within them little Birds perfectly shap’d, supposed to be Barnacles [by which he meant barnacle geese].” 

Low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Somebody lost their Rainbow Friends vinyl figure of the Scientist. Was it the crabs or a sea star, or did the anemones buy it after playing Rainbow Friends on Roblox? It couldn’t have been a human toy because who would throw a $17 chunk of plastic into the ocean and risk choking out a baby dolphin or an infant sea turtle? Back in my day, when toys were made of lead, the little plaything would have sunk to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, never to be seen again.

Sea stars and anemones during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Forty-five minutes earlier, this wall was covered with mussels; now we walk by to the sounds of belches and farts, sea stars are really monsters of their domain.

Sea urchin during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Today, I learned that humans have bilateral symmetry and that creatures such as urchins and sea stars have fivefold symmetry. Turn an urchin 72 degrees, and it will appear to be the exact same creature. Turn a human 72 degrees, and they will still look human, but our head will no longer be where it should be. If you think while looking at these spines that it doesn’t look symmetrical, wait until you see its test. Something else I learned: the shell of the urchin body is an endoskeleton that grows with it, and this hard-plated structure is called a test. Caroline is holding a fragment of one below.

Sea star during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

This sea star’s gut is so full of mussel meat that its legs barely reach the ground. BUUURRRP! Finally, my chance to exercise with onomatopoeia.

Whelk during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Years ago, we had a can of whelks because back then, I was determined to try them. Ultimately, the can was thrown away because canned gastropods in the end, sounded abhorrent. Would I feel different if they were fresh?

Gumboot chitons during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

These are called the potatoes of the sea and, French-fried with a bit of ketchup, they are supposed to be yummy. These are not potatoes; they are two healthy gumboot chitons that were roaming free, likely detached from rocks for mating. So, while I don’t want to freak out my wife, she might have moved them while they were releasing sperm and eggs. Hopefully, this wasn’t an act of genocide, causing 100s of thousands of eggs not to be fertilized because her clumsy hands splashed about in the sperm while she groped for the “LOVAHS.”

Sea urchin shell during low tide at Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

“This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test.” I shared above that the endoskeleton of the urchin is called a ‘test’; this is that object with its fivefold symmetry on display.

Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

We also visited this rocky area, this is where we found the Gumboot chiton, the whelk, and the test.

Devils Punchbowl Beach in Otter Rock, Oregon

The workday is done, dinner has been had, and we’ve gone south to Devils Punchbowl Arch to evaluate if we want to be here on Saturday when the maximum negative tide will occur. With little in the way of tide pools, we agree that the need to enter the punchbowl is negligible and that we enjoy exploring tidal creatures and their environments more than exposed rock features.

Late addition: a week ago, when I first wrote this post, I excluded a bit of our experience here, as it felt too incredible to believe. After Caroline and I had already walked out over these rocks and tried peering into the cave-like openings before also checking if a path was open to walk around the corner and into the punchbowl, the tide wasn’t out and low enough, so we started on the way back. Just after taking this photo, a young couple walked up, and we explained the situation and recommended that maybe they wanted to return the next day during the lowest part of the expected negative tide. The young man believed he might find a way around the corner, so Caroline, myself, and his girlfriend stood talking and watched him go further than we had before he, too, realized there was no way to enter the punchbowl. On his way back, in a split second, a boulder from above was careening down, and the three of us screamed at the guy to start running – NOW! As he began sprinting, the three of us noticed a guy above who started running away, too, the guy who rolled the boulder off the cliff. There was no way he could have seen anyone below from his angle as he’d have had to hang over the side, but the foolishness of his stupidity was so incredibly explosively large, and the boulder was so close to having killed a person we were shocked. I can be seriously happy that Caroline and I weren’t still out there as nobody would have been nearby to yell at us to run away.

Devils Punchbowl Beach in Otter Rock, Oregon

The beach on the north side of Punchbowl is very short, while the one here on the south side…

Devils Punchbowl Beach in Otter Rock, Oregon

…is quite long. In the far distance, about halfway down the shore, is the Beverly Beach State Park. Beyond that, we could see the Yaquina Head Lighthouse, but the photo at this resolution can’t resolve it.

Gooseneck barnacles on Devils Punchbowl Beach in Otter Rock, Oregon

The one interesting find down here was a log that had washed up and was pretty rank-smelling. These are supposedly gooseneck barnacles, but if they are, they are either ancient or something has been misidentified because they do not look like the ones we’ve seen nearshore.

The visitors of your area, in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State, and local authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, an official message would have followed the alert tone. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

Finding Routines on the Oregon Coast

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Harbor in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Wake up and check the weather. No rain. The sky looks clear. Let’s go. The harbor looks nice; let’s walk from here. Brrr, it’s cold in the shadows! How can it be only 41 degrees (5 Celsius) on a summer day? We should walk in the sun. But if we walk south, we’ll be on the road. Okay, let’s turn around and head for Boiler Bay. Oh, look, that coffee shop is open. Mmmm, marionberry scones.

Depoe Bay, Oregon

Following our amazing week on the Oregon Coast, we shared an even amazinger weekend out here. Maybe it was the amazingest even. But now it’s Monday all over again (oops, I mean Tuesday), so this might start to be seen as some kind of routine for us. Wake, walk by the sea, have homemade breakfast (the scone was pre-breakfast dessert), work/write, eat homemade lunch (today it was cold corona beans with fresh chermoula), work/write, make dinner, walk, sleep, repeat. That sounds like a good plan to me, but please keep the rain away.

Depoe Bay, Oregon

There is one thing that is not becoming the routine I’d hoped for, and that’s working on the draft of my novel. As important as I might want to find that project, being here with Caroline and being present for the two of us has more significance in the scheme of things. Some photos of how and where we are sharing our time before and after the work day, some memories of those experiences noted, fresh homemade meals (outside of our routine menu), and extra smiles at one another due to our proximity are all taking precedence over my desire to have found an abundance of opportunity to visit great settings for multi-hour writing sessions. At home, Caroline and I are always apart on weekdays, but here in Oregon, we’ve always been connected at the hip, 24/7, as they say. To break with that tradition while here at the seashore would feel counter to every other day we’ve spent out here.

Depoe Bay, Oregon

These places on the coast have been experienced by the two of us precisely equally. To disrupt that balance would be a kind of sacrilege to all that is perfect between Caroline and me. As I sit at a dining room table in the house we are borrowing for this excursion, I can look out the window, such as now, when the weather is perfect and the trees are blowing. If I go to the kitchen window and look through some branches and over the leaves, I can catch glimmers of the sea out on the horizon. Nature beckons, but Caroline must tend to her computer and the job obligations she has, and while I know she’d never ask me to suffer on her behalf, there’s something reassuring in knowing that we are fully sharing in our experiences while up in Oregon.

Seals in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Sometimes, a not-so-great photo must be shared because it’s the best we’ve got. We’d stood on an overlook high over the cove and watched a few seals coming and going in the water while on a more distant shore, maybe a dozen were congregating in the sun under a cliffside covered with no less than hundreds of birds, but if you told me it was thousands, I’d likely have believed you. We both thought the smaller seal had died, so this photograph came about as Caroline took my phone and zoomed in to somewhere around 30x, and we learned that it was apparently asleep.

Taft Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

Then the whole day goes by, and even dinner has already been had before we find ourselves back out in the world where other stuff is happening, and we become part of that parade of things in nature.

Taft Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

To the trained eye it is obvious that we are looking at seals, not driftwood, on the northern end of the Salishan Spit. Those with untrained minds might wonder why we are out here on such a windy day. For my eyes and imagination, I have to wonder why we chose to live in Phoenix, Arizona, though I don’t really, as it’s a simple equation. When where you live is relatively benign, with wide streets, not grand boulevards, strip malls, and enough cinderblock to build 1000 pyramids, that banality exponentiates the charm of everywhere else you go.

Taft Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

It’s possible that as an amateur photographer, I’ve come to rely on the silhouetted image a bit much, but when you are confronted with the glistening, almost blinding reflection of the sun and its silvery scintillations on the surface of the ocean, there’s really no other way to convey how stark and seductive the image is.

Caroline Wise flying her kite on Taft Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

We might be exploring some photographic/thematic redundancy here during our stay in Oregon, and while novelty might wear thin for the repeat visitors to this blog, these reminders of how often Caroline was able to fly her kite, how frequently we walked the same stretch of beach or similarities between forest walks will all be powerful recipes for putting smiles on our faces in the years to come.

Nelscott Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

We walked north along Taft Beach, passed by the Inn at Spanish Head and crossed over to Nelscott Beach. A bit farther up north, the beach is bisected by a small stream not far from where we the other day we had descended the cliffside on a set of stairs that includes all the stairs ever.

Jellyfish on Taft Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

For us, seeing this jellyfish on the shore, magnifying the sand below and amplifying the light ahead, makes for an interesting sight. As for the experience of the jellyfish being out of the water and likely either at the end of its life or about to kick sand, I’m guessing things are going poorly for it right now.

Purple Iris in Depoe Bay, Oregon

June, the host of our June getaway on the Oregon coast, asked that we pay attention to the irises in her front yard and send her a photo of them should they bloom. I didn’t look at them yesterday, with the rain and overcast sky and all, so they might have bloomed then, but it was only today, getting back to the house shortly before 9:00 p.m., that I reminded Caroline that we need to remember to check in on the flowers. She looked over and thought that they might have flowered, and obviously, on closer examination, we found they indeed had entered the state of ultimate beauty.

Late Day Adventure at the Oregon Coast

JWise Photo of the Day, Rant, Travels

Depoe Bay, Oregon

Waking to rain this morning made our decision to lazy it up an easy one. Who wants to wander around at 5:30 in the morning when the sky is leaking? Plus, it’ll stop in a minute, right? By 8:00, still without having stepped a foot out of the house, Caroline went to her temporary office on the veranda while I grabbed an umbrella and headed up the road for some requisite shopping. It felt like we could afford to squander a day in which zero steps might be a reasonable goal. Heck, in our first week hanging at the Pacific, we’ve averaged more than 18,000 steps a day, or about 8.5 miles (14km). Regarding shopping, life on the coast in a small town had a particular reality crash into me this morning; unless you eat SAD (Standard American Diet), you are going to spend a good amount of time tracking down your groceries because there’s not one store where you can get everything you need if you enjoy a broad-spectrum diet influenced by other ethnicities. Two hours later, I was back in Depoe Bay, and while the rain had stopped, it was still cloudy. Caroline was working, so walking would have to wait. And then it happened: after dinner, flipping the coin to see if we should hit the trail and move the needle to at least a minimum of movement, we opted not to go full-on lazy. At the oceanfront, we turned right, but not before grabbing this photo of the silvery sea.

WARNING: The rest of the post is not really about the joy of being out here. It’s a rant and one that’s probably been said far too often on this blog. Skip the rest. Oh,  you can look at the photos and enjoy them. Allow the images to inspire you to visit the Oregon Coast, but leave the words unread. Grumpy old John was in lamenting mode.

Agnes Creek Open Space in Lincoln City, Oregon

Caroline identified the Agnes Creek Open Space up the road as somewhere we might want to take a short walk, and so without a better suggestion, it seemed as good as anything else. Except, it was a wonderful little enclave of nature being restored after having been clear-cut somewhere between the 1940s and 1960s. The date range is so wide because, apparently, nobody knows exactly when that was done. This brings up another opportunity for me to kvetch, this time about the nature of people and what we do in the name of progress and in the name of the lord. Inspired by the adage, “Idle hands are the devil’s tools,” Protestants and their industrious ideas of hard work having spiritual qualities created a kind of thinking that as long as a man was working, he was moving closer to God. But instead of honoring God’s creation, he’s been busy trying to scrape clean the Garden of Eden he’s been supplied.

Agnes Creek Open Space in Lincoln City, Oregon

We tear down nature to build churches and temples but end up destroying the safety net of Earth that sustains life. For at least 10,000 years, and up to possibly 20,000 years, the various Salish tribes, including the Tillamook, Siletz, Yaquina, Alsea, Siuslaw, and Coos people, lived here along the coast in all seasons without having to deforest the land, clear large areas so individuals could have palatial oceanfront mansions, and turn beautiful, wooded areas into golf courses. The idea that God imbued the land with a bounty for our taking is a manipulation that clears our consciousnesses of guilt for having such greed. It seems like self-evident truth that living in a balance of harmony with not only the land, sky, and water but also with the people who first called these places home would be in keeping with the alleged lessons of God, where in Genesis 2:15 of the Old Testament it says, “And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” It does not say to rape it, shit on it, and turn it into some de Sade-like pornographic horror of satisfying the whims of commerce, but that’s what we do.

Agnes Creek Open Space in Lincoln City, Oregon

By and large, it’s what we are doing to this day. Women in our country are free for all appearances, but 101 years after the Equal Rights Amendment was proposed, it is still not ratified. It was only in 1978 that the American Indian Religious Freedom Act allowed Native Americans to practice their traditional religions. And even here in the early 21st century, we had a recent president who rolled back laws that protected the climate, clean air, clean water, endangered species, and opened up more offshore drilling. That man was applauded for his actions by the religious right and captains of business who have everything to gain by employing their minions to keep taking more as long as it benefits the bank accounts of those who can never be satisfied.

Agnes Creek Open Space in Lincoln City, Oregon

Elon Musk stands in front of his phallic spaceships, Mark Zuckerberg flaunts international law to privately move his super yacht, and Larry Ellison buys the Hawaiian island of Lanai as the system of wealth grows exponentially for a few and the masses continue to toil for a relative pittance while doing the bidding of those who gather opulence while not giving a care if a wild mushroom still grows in a rain forest. I’m not against capitalism, I’m NOT for communism, I generally enjoy the way life is, but I also feel like we need to make concrete moves to restore vast parts of our landscapes, not just 54 acres like here at Agnes Creek Open Space or some other random number of acres in various locations across America.

Agnes Creek Open Space in Lincoln City, Oregon

With the help of maybe somewhat questionable artificial intelligence found in Claude, it seems that we set aside between 10% and 15% of the space in a city for parks and recreation sites. San Francisco seems to lead the pack, with 19% of its lands dedicated to parks and open spaces, and with the environmental awareness of California being what it is, I’m guessing that maintaining a healthy ecosystem within those lands is a paramount concern.

Agnes Creek Open Space in Lincoln City, Oregon

I’m considering the arguments that could be made with my post so far: my perceived anti-capitalist stance, the anti-God stance, not taking into account our insurmountable drug problems, affordable housing problems, poor job opportunities, lack of education, the strain that a growing population would put on resources and infrastructure that many would say are presently inadequate, but reading off the litany of issues is simply a smoke screen to mask that we are doing next to nothing on all fronts. Small blossoms of growth needn’t be denied due to larger, seemingly intractable problems that fall on the shoulders of the common person instead of being driven by those extracting the kind of wealth that can build $500 million yachts because they have the voices and audiences of those who want to watch and listen to their musings.

Agnes Creek Open Space in Lincoln City, Oregon

And we are two of the lucky people. Caroline and I have the means to put ourselves in these environments where they do exist. We are able to carve out the time and see firsthand what the natural spaces between represent of our past, away from where the majority now live. This weird emphasis on a personal, private space called the single-family home for many arrives with a bizarre sense of ultimate freedom that can only be had behind bolted doors, clutching a weapon, watching our theater size TV screen, with a garage full of stuff we’ll never use can only be characterized as a madness brought on by the mass-hysteria instilled by advertising-driven engines of non-stop consumption. Try to notice how you are never enticed to visit free places where things such as moss-covered forest beds grow vibrantly green, well, unless it were part of a resort, which obviously isn’t free.

Empty crab shell at Agnes Creek Open Space in Lincoln City, Oregon

Caroline collected the scattered parts of this crab that, for some peculiar reason, a seagull must have dragged into the nearby forest for its lunch. After putting the crab back together, she took a photo with her phone; I came up and took this one.

Caroline Wise at Nelscott Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

This tiny pocket kite was likely the driving reason behind buying the other kite, which flies nicely indeed. This one, on the other hand, belongs in the trash and is a waste of resources. This is an instance when novelty and perceived convenience went awry in the design process, but the creators knew that suckers would buy the cute little kite with dreams of things taking to the skies like an underdog finding its mojo. Near the short trail we were just walking was a small beach access path to Nelscott Beach, where we were doing our best not only to get this kite to go aloft but also to catch up with our step deficit.

Nelscott Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

We tried rescuing the mussels and their attached barnacles that had broken free of their moorings, but once on land, they seemed to want to remain on shore.

Nelscott Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon

Should you have gotten to the end of this post after being warned not to go further, and you are wondering what happened to the prose extolling love, beauty, passion, and the intensities of vacation-like days, that writing is being saved for my novel. This stuff, when need be, is the exorcising of demons to allow the catharsis of spirit to explore beautiful ideas and sentence structures. Writing this, I’m brought to thinking how the majority of my work on this novel I speak of is written in a coffee shop with no view, with no inherent special qualities; for that, I have to look deep into my mind and imagination, likely the place where our experiences in these environments live.

Sunday in the Coastal Woods of Oregon

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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]

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Salmonberry on Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Fairy Inkcap Mushrooms on Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Sheathed Woodtuft Mushrooms on Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Caroline Wise on Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Banana Slug on Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Red-Sided Garter Snake on Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

View south from Cape Perpetua in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Cape Perpetua Stone Shelter via the Whispering Spruce Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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

Caroline Wise on Amanda's Trail in Yachats, Oregon

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.

Bridge in Waldport, Oregon

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.

Alsea River Bay in Waldport, Oregon

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

Dutch Bros. in Newport, Oregon

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.

A Thousand Miles of Oregon Coast

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

View from our kitchen window in Depoe Bay, Oregon

This is our view out of the kitchen window; in the distance is the ocean. What’s wrong with this picture? We’ve not yet been out at that ocean today because we opted to sleep in, and not only that, but we’ve also been too lazy to get moving. This actually is a common thing for us on Saturdays, though it shouldn’t be when our time on the coast is rather limited. Every moment in our little slice of paradise by the sea should be maximized, and in reality, they are, even when we go slow.

Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

Our first stop today was not for a walk. Instead, we drove south for breakfast at the Newport Cafe in, you guessed it, Newport. It’s a funky little place we’ve been visiting since 2012 when we had our first 4-pound Ultimate Monster Burger when it cost $13.95. Today, that burger is $25, but we weren’t here for that at this time of day, though they’ll serve one up if you really want it. Nope, we were here for the Pacific Seafood Scramble, which includes crab, shrimp, scallops, and veggies. Even at $21, there’s enough seafood in this dish that it feels like a bargain.

This sculpture at Nye Beach in Newport was carved by a local artist, German-born Juergen Eckstein. It was made from a piece of redwood that washed up on a local beach. The piece is called “Absence of Emptiness.”

Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

We are at Nye Beach to walk off our over-indulgent breakfast. If you can see the Yaquina Head Lighthouse in the distance, we are heading that way.

Caroline Wise on Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

We couldn’t ask for a more beautiful day, and had we needed anything, Caroline likely had it with her in that bag. It may look smallish, but she carries a kite, binoculars, some knitting, hunting gear, an inflatable small raft, a change of clothes, and a fax machine, I swear.

Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

Our form of beach combing also takes in finding random clumps of grass growing on the world’s smallest sand dune.

Yaquina Head Lighthouse seen from Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

Getting closer to the lighthouse.

Sand dollar at Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

One of the best specimens of sand dollars we’ve found yet, it’s coming home with us if it doesn’t crumble before we get there.

Penis sand art on Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

I’ve seen a lot of beach penis in my lifetime, but this is a capital specimen that I can get behind, and I assure you, it was just as amazing in person as your imagination is telling you it is. Just look at its joyous smile.

Yaquina Head from Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

The map says it’s a 2.5-mile (4km) walk from Nye Beach to Yaquina Head. although through our zigzagging, we turned it into a 3.5-mile (5.6km) walk, but we couldn’t have asked for better weather. It was just beautiful out there.

Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

This is the edge of a streambed crossing the beach between us and the cliffside of Yaquina Head that we thought we’d reach out and touch before turning around, but in the end, believing we had another 7,500 steps (3.5 miles) back to our car, it wasn’t all that important.

Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

Off in the distance is where we need to be.

Approaching rain on Nye Beach in Newport, Oregon

Out of nowhere, a tempest started moving in from offshore, but I was certain it was no threat. That was until it started raining on us. Good thing Caroline carries rain jackets, umbrellas, and a waterproof case for my camera in that bag on her shoulder. “Excuse me, what do you mean you didn’t pack those today, wife?” I asked in disbelief. At 9:00 p.m., when I was writing this post, my fleece was still wet.

Bread & Roses Bakery in Yachats, Oregon

Twenty-five miles south and the sun was out, as was good fortune. An hour before Bread & Roses in Yachats was closing, they still had a few things on hand that grabbed our attention, such as this Celestial Snail Danish that was made more interesting by its name due to the connection to Caroline’s childhood nickname, Schnecke, the German word for “snail”. Around the corner and across the street we visited the Green Salmon Coffee Company and picked up three pounds of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe coffee beans, with one of them set to be a gift to our friend Brinn, who happened through Yachats about a decade ago.

Caroline Wise at Ona Restaurant in Yachats, Oregon

Next up was a stop at Ona Restaurant, also in Yachats. While we had a reservation for 6:30 this evening, we opted to have lunch here instead. Originally, the idea was that we might take a room further south to have a weekend at another coastal location, but with our digs in Depoe Bay being as perfect as they are, we are quite happy to stay right there. Plus, the weekend rates of lodging at this time of year are way out of hand. With a photo of our main dish just below, I have to describe our appetizer, which we have had before and is half of the reason we are back. It is the Rainforest Maitake Mushroom Pâté with marinated onions, arugula, olive tapenade, and feta. It is Wunderbar.

Seafood pasta from Ona Restaurant in Yachats, Oregon

This is the Ona Pasta featuring wild Mexican prawns, scallops, clams, rockfish, halibut, and baby spinach in a saffron cream sauce. It is as great today as it was a couple of years ago when we first tried this dish.

Caroline Wise at Tidewater Creations in Waldport, Oregon

Five days was a long time for Caroline to be on the Oregon coast without having the opportunity to buy yarn, but here she is, happy as a clam to have this chance to shop for the fibery reason of her existence. The shop is called Tidewater Creations in Waldport and is also the home of Twisted Tidewater, the owner’s own brand of beautiful hand-dyed yarns and spinning fiber. Caroline was able to pick up some mushroom-dyed yarn as well as pretty batts for spinning while I carefully selected a colorful skein of sock yarn.

Lost Creek in Newport, Oregon

What started as the need for the restroom here at the Lost Creek State Recreation Site turned into another 90-minute walk down the shoreline. Gotta get the steps in to fight against the heavy carb indulgences.

Keyhole limpet from Lost Creek in Newport, Oregon

We didn’t know what shells these were while out on the beach; it turns out that they are keyhole limpets. Their name shouldn’t fool you, though; while they are a species of sea snail, they are not, in fact, true limpets. What’s a limpet, you ask? Sorry, I’m not going to copy and paste every Wikipedia article I read. While I was in research mode, I also confirmed the identity of these tiny jumping things that we keep seeing on the beach, especially near rotting plants. They are beach hoppers, better known as sand fleas, though they are in no way related to fleas. They are related to crabs and shrimps, tiny versions of them, and are on the beach to help clean up organic matter; it is the lowly beach hopper that is responsible for the tiny holes on the shore as waves recede.

Lost Creek in Newport, Oregon

Need a beach to yourself? Visit Oregon in the summer.

After our drive back to Depoe Bay, getting through the photos and the majority of writing this post, we turned on the disco ball and lights at the hot tub before falling into the characters of Professors Roger and Virginia Clarvin at the Welshly Arms discussing the eating of succulent and juicy capons. If you don’t know the Rachel Dratch and Will Ferrell sketch from Saturday Night Live, this joke won’t work for you.

Fossils on the Oregon Coast

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise at Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

This example of a still-mobile older woman walking down the beach proves that human fossils still have a life after 50 years of age. Not only is she capable of getting outside of her routine, here at the cusp of summer on the Oregon coast where it was a brisk 48 degrees (9 Celsius) (though with the wind chill factored in, it felt like 40 degrees (4.5 Celsius)), this fine example of womanhood girded her loins and showed the male of the species how being tough is done. What she forgets is that her mate is at an advanced age of 61 and that has likely mastered the art of the whine, not so much for effect but for the sake of annoying the female, who has shown the kind of thin skin that lets her cringe every time he opens his mouth.

Fossils at Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

Oops, I wasn’t supposed to start this post speaking of our own fossilized natures and humor. I was supposed to save that for describing the awesome seashells encased in rock here on Wade Creek Beach.

Bald eagle at Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

In a flash, a bald eagle soared overhead, marking the first time Caroline and I had ever seen one of these majestic birds in Oregon.

Fossils at Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

Initially, my own half-fossilized brain had more questions than answers when looking at these ancient artifacts from distant times, such as: will I see fish or marine mammal skeletal remains, or why have all of those fossil remnants fallen out of the cliffside that’s overhead? Excitement clouds the brain, or in keeping with the getting old jokes, the elderly mind is clouded by its aged state. Anyway, there are simple, easy answers.

Columnar jointed lava at Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

And part of that answer starts right here with the fossilized dinosaur skin. Just kidding, this is what’s known as columnar jointing and can occur from cooling andesite magma. Sorry but I’m not going into a full science lesson to describe it all.

Columnar jointed lava at Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

In a nutshell, as lava was flowing to the sea, there were times when ash, mud, or lava was reaching the shore and, at times, further into the ocean. While I’m no expert on such matters, these jointed columns likely used to lie under the sea or being eroded by waves due to their smooth surfaces.

Fossils at Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

The reason we’re only seeing shellfish would be that as the ash and mud were flowing into the nearby waters, they were rolling over the clams, scallops, snails, mussels, and barnacles that couldn’t move out of the way. As for the plant life that would have been covered in such a grave, I do not know why there is no visual record of their previous existence. Maybe if I looked closer and took a moment from being so enchanted by the largest, most obvious finds, I’d start to see the plant fossils.

Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

And then there’s the matter of plate tectonics and continental drift, which shoves massive parts of the earth around, such as uplifting the Pacific Coast where the obvious recipient of these herculean efforts of nature are witnessed as mountains, but even at the seashore, there’s no reason to doubt that at times, these lands are uplifted as well. So, this explains why all this stuff is now overhead instead of deep below our feet. About this blue rock, it’s actually clay that was once volcanic ash that might be deficient in iron and aluminum. (I wrote about that during a visit to Moolack Beach six years ago.) As for the separating bands of different materials responsible for the strange patterns, I’m going to guess that those were sediments that had the chance to accumulate between ash flows.

Wade Creek Beach in Newport, Oregon

And this concludes our exciting morning walk at Wade Creek Beach. My next check-in will be after 5:00, when Caroline and I take off for another grand coastal adventure here in Oregon.

This just in: family circumstances, being the fluid things they are, have created a situation where our hosts, June and Marvin, have had to cancel their trip to France. Obviously, the right thing to do was for me to offer them their home back, as they are now down in the super-hot Valley of the Sun baking themselves instead of enjoying the smell of freshly baked croissants on the streets of France. While we’ve been reassured that we do not have to bail out on our work/vacation stay here in Oregon, it was a quick lesson in how attached we’d already become to this luxury at the seashore. It’s also a great reminder not to get too attached to things, as nothing is permanent. Be grateful for every moment and celebrate those times because you never know what tomorrow brings.

Fogarty Creek Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

The workday finally came to an end, and a quick dinner was shared before our five-minute drive north to Fogarty Creek Beach. With only minutes past high tide, we were limited on how far we could walk here, so we aimed for a turnoff a minute north across the street from the Chester Market to see if there was beach access over there.

Lincoln Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

Lincoln Beach, still in Depoe Bay, is a nice sandy affair, but maybe it’s too clean, according to Caroline. There will be no beachcombing at a place without rocks, shells, trash, or cliffside fossils. Nothing left to do but bring out Happy McKiteface.

Caroline Wise at Lincoln Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

We were surprised at how easily the kite went aloft even though the wind was a light affair. Maybe it was just a breeze, but up the kite went, as did the smile on my wife’s face.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Lincoln Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

There’s a serious joy had by Caroline when she’s flying a kite. I asked her about it, and she equates it to taking a dog for a walk where it tugs and pulls at its lead, which, in a way, animates both the kite and the sky above us. I probably took close to 40 photos of us trying to get one that worked. In portrait mode, I kept slicing off half of my head, and in landscape mode, the Caroline’s kite was out of the frame, or we were too dark, cut off, only heads without shoulders and a ton of sky above us, or some other mishap of lacking photographic skills that denied us a selfie with our pet kite. Remember, we are using a DSLR instead of a phone, so I cannot see the screen. However, while the camera has a screen, I find it too distracting, and end up looking at it instead of the center of the lens.

Caroline Wise at Lincoln Beach in Depoe Bay, Oregon

While there were not as many photos to share today as other days, don’t think for an instant that it was any less spectacular. Not only did we spend every minute near each other, but after we returned to the house, we finally took advantage of the hot tub bubbling away at a toasty 105 degrees (44.5 Celsius). Next time, we’ll plug in the spotlight that points at a disco ball that we only saw after we took our seats in the tub. Seriously perfect.