Wanderings of the old sloat: Cruising Down the Coast

As of Tuesday, September 1, I have progressed down the coast to Brookings OR on my way home. Had some interesting weather last Friday...an unseasonably strong storm raked the Washington and Oregon coasts. There were branches down in places as far south as northern Oregon, but the hardest hit area was in Olympic National Park near Kalaloch. Had to do a slalom around trees and branches in the roadway last Friday morning.

Debris in a parking lot near the beach. Just south of here, I was delayed for about half an hour...a tree nearly three feet in diameter fell across highway 101 and the authorities had to saw it up and clear the road.

But, I had a nice spot to wait out the delay. A driftwood strewn beach near Kalaloch.

Two days later the weather was much quieter as I hiked a bit of the Cape Lookout trail.

A beach near the cape.

There are two Haystack Rocks on the northern Oregon coast. This is the lesser known one, at Cape Kiwanda.

Along the Otter Crest Loop, the old highway 101, I found this classic Conde McCullough bridge. As the state's main bridge architect in the 1930s, McCullough built most of the bridges on 101...Art Deco classics.

The Solara next to a typical coastal tree.

Devil's Churn, just south of Yachats.

Typical Oregon beach near the churn. There are hundreds of fine strands in the Beaver State. It would take an entire summer to visit them all.

This scene on the Siltcoos River in the Oregon Dunes presents a bit of a mystery. Blow the pic up and check out the stumps in the meadow. They're obviously quite old. When and how did they get there? Two events in 1964 may have done it...a tsunami in March, and a massive flood in December. There have been other big storms since, but my bet would be that those stumps have been in place for just over 50 years.