Pivot Day 5 - A Little Sunshine on our shoulders

I slept in a little, so by the time I woke up Dave had a plan in mind. By the time we finished our breakfast and morning tea and tidying the trailer it was just about low tide, so we headed up towards Yaquina Head. On the way there I suggested we stop at Seal Rock State Recreation Site, which turns out to be a very cool place for a whole lot of reasons. First, it has two huge columnar basalt monoliths at one end, one of which is falling over so Dave had to help hold it up (ok not really). In between then there’s a narrow passage you can scramble into. Heading south from there are many fins and outcroppingsin two rows – a taller row further out, and flatter rocks creating a fantastic tide pool area and lots of interesting rock shapes. There is also a lot of sandstone everywhere, and places where there are layers of sandstone interspersed with layers of broken up basalt. If you want to know everything about it, check this out: https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/downloads/4m90f0597?locale=en. We ended up spending a long time walking around the tide pools and climbing around the edges, but eventually we were ready to move on. 

We continued on up to Yaquina Head and walked out to the lighthouse and up Salal hill, a gentle uphill hike through thick salal bushes with fantastic views. A sign at the top of Salal Hill talked about the quarrying that had taken place at Yaquina Head to produce basalt for making highway 101. There were upper and lower quarries and once you know about them it changes how the whole place looks – the visitor center is in the upper quarry.

On the way there we also noticed a sign we’d never seen before – apparently Hwy 20 which takes off from Newport ends up in Kenmore Square 3,365 miles away. Sounds like a road trip!

Lunch was at Wolf Tree brewery, where the beer and food were both good, although my 2 sliders needed some chips or fries to make them a meal. Wolf Tree is new, just south of the Newport bridge in a little community called Wilder, and the sign by the restaurant also lists the Newport Symphony as a tenant. It’s a good place to keep in mind since it has ample parking and is outside the regular tourist areas. The road to it is across 101 from the South Beach Fish Market, which is always crowded.

After lunch it was recliner time. We both did some good napping. Once we were up Dave found a nice hike for us along Beaver Creek, in the Beaver Creek State Natural area, part of Brian Booth State Park. It’s a very different hike than we’ve been doing, through a wide marshy area and then up into the trees, with cows bellowing like a foghorn off in the distance. We ran into a man who was taking off in his kayak from the kayak launch, which looked fun. After the hike we stopped at the seal rock overlook and walked out to the overlook. On the way back we passed a man who said, “It’s impossible to get anywhere on schedule when this country is so stupidly beautiful”, and that about sums it up. There are so many little parks with trails in this area you could just spend all your time finding new places to see.

Trailer dinner again tonight – black bean salad that we brought for lunches at Lava Beds. It was mostly cloudy all day today with little bits of sun peeking through, but as we ate dinner the sky cleared out until it was pretty much wall to wall blue skies. We decided that we’d drive back up to Seal Rock and watch the sunset in the hope of seeing a green flash. Seal Rock has several turnouts and by sunset they were almost all full of sunset seekers. We walked over to the south end of the cove and Dave found a nice flat grassy spot that made a perfect place to sit and watch. While we didn’t see a green flash it was a very pretty sunset, complete with fingernail moon to the south. Dave pointed out that we’re close enough to the equinox that the sun is setting almost due west, and showed it with his compass app. Seal Rock may be one of my favorite places.

We came home and did some more Nez du Vin, including “bilberry” which is what they call blueberry for some reason. It was fun smelling blackberry as they are growing like crazy everywhere and are ripe and delicious. Tomorrow morning we pack up and head home. We are glad we got to spend an extended time here and already have a list of things we want to do next time!