Central Oregan Coast 7-9 Oct

Celso and I awoke and, leaving Tristan to sleep, went for a 1/4 mile walk down to the beach. On the path there were markings for the sea front postion at various different years. Since 1854 more than 200m of new land has been formed after the settlers there built two stone piers out into the sea from the mouth of the river in Newport to allow safe passage in and out of Newport's harbour. The piers trap sand that is borne Northwards by the tide and now is covered in a low forest and damp grassland which is full of deer. We met a young one on the path, a black tailed, white bottomed deer with big Bambi eyes that rushed off into the long grasses so that only its head was soon visible. We decided to go to the Oregon aquarium in Newport and spent 21/2 happy hours especially in a hands on rocky shore exhibit where you could gently touch sea cucumbers, anenomes, crabs and small fish. Then it was feeding time and total chaos in all the exhibits as all the creatures bent, curled, clutched, swooped and argued over little bits of shrimp and fish. There was one of those excellent walk through tunnels with sharks and rays, enormous sturgeon and shoals of anchovies. As we left we could hear the honking of seals and went to investigate. It turns out that a large proportion of male sealions spend much of the year in Newport harbour on several floating jetties; I don't know what they were originally for but they are now very much the territory of the sea lions. They leave to go and visit the ladies who remain in California all year round. It was a very unruly and raucus scene, each sea lion vying for a space on the jetty and fierce scuffles breaking out if any new arrivals tried to get a spot. We spent over an hour watching them whilst eating fish and chips, occasionally having to put up with acidic, fishy, foul smelling burps that were sent forth in a visible cloud of steam after much heaving and snorting by the large lads (sea lions) below us! By mid afternoon we set off south again and were stopped every few miles by more amazing views. At Strawberry Hill we stopped to watch seals in some viscious white water on the surf line round some rocky outcrops (more igneous rock that has withstood the erosion). They seemed just as interested in us as we were in them and stopped to stare at us, some failing to keep a careful enough eye on the incoming rollers were tossed by the waves as they passed. Incredibly the road is sometimes right next to the beach about 20m from the sea, it seems so exposed to the enormous expanse of the Pacific; it is also a little unnerving to keep on coming across signs that say 'Entering Tsunami Danger Zone'. The road will then rise up through forests and onto precarious narrow stretches round the cliffs until it drops again next to the beaches. There are very rare detours away from the coastline mainly to circumnavigate estuaries, though many have enormous bridges (like the one in Newport that you can see in some of the photos). A pretty place we stopped was called Point Perpetua, it was howling with wind and the sea was crashing around its base. It was named by Captain Cook who after naming Cape Foulweather (that I told you about in the last entry) spent 5 days trying to get south to this point. The Point was in view for the full 5 days but the weather so bad that it never seemed to get any closer and so he named it Point Perpetua (or that is the story anyway!). Further down the coast again we stopped at a look out point called Heceta Head and were greeted, as we left the van, by the familiar honking of the sea lions. There on the beach below was a huge hoard of sea lions, perhaps 150 individuals strong, with yet more in the sea round about. We camped in another State campground at Jessie M Honeyman State Park, just South of Florence) which is in a beautiful wood just behind some enormous sand dunes and then the beach; .......or so we thought; but in the morning (Thursday) we found that we were 3 miles from the beach and we had entered an enormous sand dune system (called Doons in American, that stretches for 45 miles along the coast at this point. We wandered up the dunes and built a sandcastle at the top, it probably shan't last very long as not only is the sand dune system an active one (with shifting sands all the time) but we placed our magnificent construction right on the edge of an off road buggy, quad bike area! Strangely the dunes went straight down into a lake which was surrounded by some very lush forest including pitcher plants which I always associated with rain forest. We drove south through the dunes that sometimes almost spilt onto the road through gaps in the trees and stopped at an information centre to learn more. It turns out that the sand comes from thousands of years of erosion of the Cascade Mountains that run North South from Washington State down through Oregon. The sand is deposited in the sea by the hundreds of rivers that flow down from the mountains. Along most of the coast there are ancient volcanic rocks that form cliffs and headlands and prevent the formation of dunes, but in the 45 miles stretch from Florence to Coos Bay there was no volcanic activity, so no cliffs, the land is flat inland until the mountains and so first the tide deposits the sand on the beach and then the wind can blow all the sand up onto the land. It is a constantly shifting system; at times old growth forest is slowly engulfed, rivers are blocked to form great lakes and the dunes slowly migrate over the landscape; at other times (mainly due to human interference) the winds are blocked and plants manage to take hold, first grasses, then small shrubs and later larger plants like rhodedendrons and trees. Our curiosity about the dunes satisfied, we continued south, stopping for lunch at the strangely named Jack Ripper Saunders Lake. Several fishermen were casting lines from both the bank and various types of boats. Celso joined them, of course, and had several bites and finally caught a decent fish (that he said was too small for me to photograph, but I can say that it was a fairly large rainbow trout, at least as large as those we buy at home!). Celso's face got splattered with blood as he despatched his fish -- that was rather apt (I thought) for the Jack Ripper lake. Tris and I ate cheese and biscuits in the van, because a cold wind was constantly blowing down through a gap between the sand dunes that surrounded us, and watched Celso's efforts through the window! We then got on our way again and crossed a fantastic long bridge into Coos Bay; despite our efforts we were unable to find a spot from which to photograph this great bridge; and then we followed the coast road through thick fog to Charleston to stop in another state park, where Celso nearly lost his gutted, cleaned and seasoned fish to a cat. Later I went to have a shower and walked by torch light to get to the 'restrooms', the fog was incredible with distinct droplets of water in the air visible in the torchlike, just like when you see the dust in the air in sunlight. A fog horn sounded nearly all night which kept Celso awake but I slept like a baby! Friday - Celso got up really early a little crotchety for his bad nights sleep, he went out and did some exercise. We got up and on our way quite promptly and found that we were really close to the edge of a small cliff down to the beach - we hadn't been able to see that the night before in the fog! We went down to check out the beach and, though the sun was blazing, it was quite chilly in the strong wind that blew in off the sea so we set off again to head south along a very narrow coast road through a working forest where various different aged trees were growing and some areas were clear cut looking like some sort of war zone. We reached another secluded beach were a small river emptied itself onto the sand and we decided to stop for a walk. The stink of a dead seal was overpowering for a short while but then we hit the open sand and headed for some curious looking rocks, at first I was convinced that they were some sort of man made structure because of the weird completely circular protrusions or indentations in it, but in the end we concluded that they were some sort of sandstone that must be millions of years old; some of the protrusions were grouped together in, what Tristan described as, a dinosaur eggs in nest formation! Who knows? In a town called Bandon (which Tristan joked should be called Abandon), the best thing was the beach and rock formations. One called 'face rock' has been known of from ancient native stories to have looked that way for atleast 1000 years (so not eroding much even though it is in the surf line). The story is that a child did not listen to their elders and went into the sea when they had been told not to, it was very rough and she nearly drowned. The girl was turned to stone with her head just above the water staring up to the skies...... that's one way to scare the kids into doing as they are told! You can see the face in a photo; as we looked at it she was staring up towards the moon which has been visible all day in the sky for the last few days. Past Bandon we stopped at 'America's largest petting zoo' which had an amazing variety of animals from goats, deer, donkeys, sheep and geese which flocked around you to be fed, to Serval cats, puma, mountain lion, llama and lynx. Some of the baby animals were brought out to be introduced to the visitors too and we got to cuddle a baby opossum called Spooky and some ferrets and stroke a 7 month old lynx, a 6 month old leopard (which sat in Tris and my laps as it drank milk from a bottle), an 8 month old lion, an 8 year old skunk, an 8 month old fox called Todd and a 10 month old Wallaby called Jack. You can see the photos. From there we continued south, occassionaly stopping for more breathtaking views, until Celso started to fall asleep (it didn't take long!) and so we stopped at Humbug Mountain State Park in a small campsite under the trees about 100m from yet another sandy beach under a huge vertical cliff.