Friday the 13th, November, 2015 Oregon Dunes

Honeyman State park, Oregon. Cloudy, very windy  and in the 50’s.

This morning the rangers came by and told us we had to move, some else reserved the spot we were in. So we moved to this site, looks pretty much like the last one, is bigger and was much easier to get into during daylight. Right behind the site are the dunes. The park is situated within a 47 mile stretch of dunes from Florence to Coos Bay. Parts of it are open to ATV’s. Not too many ATV’s out today.

 

Two miles of dunes separate Honeyman from the shoreline, but no marked trails lead to the beach.  We took off to find the beach. The dunes are wet from all the rain-the sand is hard , so it was easier hiking

 

It was so windy we found a protected spot in the dunes , had lunch and watched the waves. High surf warnings today.

 

There is a net work of roads through the trees between the dunes and ocean. Then lots of wide open dune.

Ocean dunes National Recreation area  has 32,000 of dunes and encompasses 40 miles of sand and average 250 feet in heights. At it’s widest point the area extends inland about 2.5 miles.

 

The wind and the rain have left cool designs in the sand.

At the end of the trail John yells ‘Powder!’ and runs S turns down the sand. I followed doing jumping Z  turns.

Between the dunes are forested riparian areas, lakes, etc. We saw deer tracks in the sand leading to water, a newt and fox tracks, plus this tiny garter snake.  It is supposed to rain a couple inches the rest of the weekend.