November 21, 2015 Brookings, Oregon

Sunny and high in the 60’s. Beautiful day. Brookings is supposed to be the banana belt of the Oregon coast, with temperatures frequently in the 70’s in winter. Later this week it is going to be high in the 40’s and low in the 30’s. Boo.

 

We hiked along the Chetco river in Oregon’s largest grove of old growth Myrtle trees. Some of the maples still have a few fall leaves.  The  myrtles have moss and ferns.

Deep dark forest  carpeted with shamrocks and ferns, and  trees draped with moss.The tree above John had fallen across the trail and had either new trees or branches from the old growing up out of it.

 

Small stream with fall leaves and ferns. A drift boat with fishermen went by us down on the river below.

 

Dripping moss.

 

The trail led to the northern most grove of redwoods on the coast. There was a beautiful river with moss covered rocks and fall leaves before heading into the redwoods.

 

Redwoods  and back through the myrtle.

 

On the way back we stopped at Misty mountain brewery for craft beer tasting then  walked down to the beach. John says this skull, bones and crab trap are Georgia O'Keeffe at the beach . . .

This nice lady took our photo on the beach along with her shadow. An arch in the cliffs.

Closer look at the arch and waves.

Surf boarders in the ocean and flowers along the jetty.

  It is so balmy in Brookings flowers bloom all winter here. Sunset on the jetty’s.

November 19-20, 2015 Brookings, Oregon

It started to rain at night fall last night and is still raining 24 hours later. We are heading south,hopefully eventually to warm and sun.

We drove in rain and fog most of the day. We stopped in Bandon, the cranberry capital of Oregon to look for some cranberry salsa. We checked out a few stores, including the Cranberry Sweets- a huge candy store with free samples of all their candy. Finally found some at a shop 8 miles south.

John narrowly escaped bigfoot in downtown Bandon. We passed many cranberry bogs around town.

And we narrowly escaped this T-Rex farther down the road. Still raining when we passed through Gold Beach.

 

We were on a scenic byway, but could not see most of the beauty through the rain and fog. We are now parked at Portside RV park in Brookings. We usually stay at the lovely Harris Beach State park, but they seemed to be having construction, so here we are in downtown, by the harbor. Still raining.

 

What a surprise, we woke up to no rain, but fog, then it burned off and we had sunshine!! Crab fishing is closed due to toxins, so there were piles of crab cages at the harbor across the street. 

The fog burned off, then returned, just one end of the beach. Nice rocks on the shoreline. 

I kept thinking I was seeing the light house, but the first two were private homes on the cliffs and the third is a statue on the beach of the  St George Reef lighthouse 6 miles offshore on Dragon Rock.  It was in use from 1892 to 1975. Then it was restored  and now in use again with an automatic electric light. Our friends Rob’t and Diane drove up from Jedediah Smith park, just over the border in California and met us at Chetco Brewing to visit. Their car looks like ours with the toys on it.

Sign seen in the bathroom at the brewery. The waitress took our photo. As you can see the beer really lit me up. It was fun to visit with them. We seem to be one step behind them on the coast, so we will hopefully run into them again.

The fog rolled back out and here is sunset on the harbor and beach.

Moon setting right behind the sunset.

November 17-18, 2015 Sunset Bay to Shore Acres State Parks, Oregon

We went to the tide pools in the morning. In the afternoon we hiked from the campground to Shore Acres State Park. The second trip did not fit in the last blog post, so it got it’s own.

The trail follows the cliff edge so you can watch the enormous waves. We hiked down into Norton bay. John on a bridge over the creek on the way.

Waves at the mouth of Norton bay. Then we hiked back up and this is Norton bay looking down from the other side.

Huge waves. Remember these cliffs are about 100 feet high. We have never seen waves this big before.

 

We had lunch on this point. Near the top right under the tree you can see the fence for the view point. Here is another wave from that view point. Incredible.

 

Looking south toward Shore Acres. This whole peninsula was owned by lumberman, shipbuilder L.J. Simpson. He built  a showplace three story mansion complete with a heated indoor swimming pool and large ballroom.The grounds featured five acres of formal gardens, including a Japanese-style garden built around a 100-foot lily pond. After he built it his wife became ill and died. When fire destroyed the mansion in 1921, Simpson began to build an even bigger replacement. Then he lost his money during the depression and the house and grounds fell into disrepair. In 1942 he sold his beloved Shore Acres to the State of Oregon for a park. On the cliff  on the top left is a sheltered observatory built where he had his house.  Tiny building, huge wave. The second photo is looking down from the observatory area at a wave building.

Sue in a big tree root ball.  The park service restored the gardens. John walking into the garden, with the smaller  guest house is in the gardens. Simpson and his second wife lived there for awhile before it was sold.

 

5 acre formal gardens with the Japanese garden around a 100 foot lily pond.

 

  A fountain in the garden. The barn was turned into a gift shop. The garden is created for all seasons-with showy peaks of different kinds of flowers for almost every time of the year.  Thousands of annuals and perennials May-Sept., 300 dahlias Aug- October, hundreds of  rhododendrons and azaleas Apr-May, 800 rose bushes June-Sept and 300,000 holiday lights Thanksgiving-New Years.  On the way back John went the short way to go home and start dinner. I loitered. The waves were mesmerizing, I just could not stop looking.

Sunset Bay beach is just across the street from the campground. On this point in 1973 The first transcontinental crossing of the US in  a hot air balloon began.  Beautiful crescent sand beach in a protected cove.

Rock outcroppings on Sunset Beach. Tide pools between the rocks.

  

We hiked from Simpson Reef wild life area with the seals up over the pack trail. It went straight up, then straight down and repeat for a few drainages in temperate rain forest. Very invigorating.

Parts of the trail were tree tunnels. Back to the coast and there were kind of light spots on the sky. I met a local jogging on the last night. He told me summer is pretty much the same, 60’s, windy , cloudy and cold. He said he remembers whole 6 week periods of no sun at all in the winter. I said I would not like that, he said you just have to get into the gothic aspect of it and go out every day hoping for a sliver of sunshine.  The waves today were much smaller than yesterday, but still pretty impressive.