Greetings from the Newport Public Library! I had fully intended to post an update tomorrow from Astoria, but when given the choice between spending several hours at the library, with its fast wi-fi connection and abundance of power outlets, or a stinky coffeehouse, it was a no-brainer. I left Sunday morning right on schedule, more or less, and only had to take one power nap while driving through Nevada, up into Southeastern Oregon. Unfortunately, I’ve had the (dis)pleasure of driving that stretch of road five or six times now, and it never gets any more interesting. I take that back, Paul and I drove that way coming back from the Oregon Coast a couple years ago, and I was on a Coke Slurpee caffeine/sugar-high and was hyper enough to practically be bouncing, that drive really was pretty decent. But anyways, back to the current trip…I arrived at Crater Lake and much to my dismay there was a distinct lack of clouds, but lucky for me, a wildfire was burning off to the north of the lake, and I did manage to get a couple shots I was pleased with. Unlucky for me, the mosquito population at the lake was alive and very much thriving. My poor windows…I’d washed the insides of all the windows when I cleaned my 4Runner a couple weeks ago, only to soon have palm prints and bug guts smeared all over. Every time I opened my car door, three or four mosquitoes would promptly fly in, no matter how fast I was.
The following morning I got up bright and early (a little before five, it was painful) and watched the sun come up over Crater Lake, although the only pictures from that morning that I liked were taken well after sunrise, and I could easily have slept at least half an hour longer. I am so not a morning person!!! There weren’t enough clouds at the lake to keep me entertained so I headed up the road towards a couple waterfalls I was planning on shooting. I was disappointed to find that the Tokeetee Falls trail was closed yet again due to a landslide. I had tried to shoot there on my 2006 trip as well. (The sign posted at the trailhead mentioned the January 2008 landslide, so it seems like it had reopened in between, if only briefly). It seems I’m just not destined to take pictures of that particular waterfall. With no Tokeetee Falls, I was well ahead of schedule so I stopped and took a nap (not a morning person, remember?) before heading toward Cape Blanco.
My drive up until this point had been nice and sunny, but once I got within a couple miles of the coastline, things became overcast, and it only got worse as I headed out to the Cape Blanco Lighthouse….there was no lighthouse. The fog was so thick it wasn’t even visible. I hiked a few miles through the park before heading back to the campground and played around on my laptop for a while and gave up on any hopes of sunset photos. No luck the next day either, though I drove further north up the coast, and I wound up spending most of Tuesday sitting at the Cape Arago viewpoint reading Peter Straub’s “Mr. X.” I love the gloom, I really do…just not when I’m trying to take pictures!!! Yesterday I wound up sleeping in again (sorta, I set my alarm for five, stick my head out the car door, see if it’s raining or looks cloudy, sleep a bit longer, and repeat the process until I’m awake, or I notice the sky starting to clear). With no blue sky in sight I headed up to Heceta Head Lighthouse, were I was lucky enough to find a break in the clouds. The lighthouse itself was very crowded so I wound up following a hiking trail up, up and up the hill behind the lighthouse, and eventually found myself hiking through wind and fog and getting splattered by random giant raindrops. The wind was blowing the fog across the trail and the sun was trying to shine through….very pretty! Unfortunately, I had no clue where the trail went, or how long it was so I had to turn back. From Heceta Head I continued north and after stumbling across the Newport Library and killing some time there, stopped at Seal Rock State Park for sunset…the afternoon sun didn’t last though, so there really was not much hope of an actual sunset, but I did have a good time playing around at low tide and shooting long exposures of the water coming over the rocks. I was wet to my knees by the end of the evening and couldn’t feel my toes.
Wet feet brings me up today…After playing the alarm-clock-is-it-still-cloudy-game until seven, I finally saw hints of blue sky and got up and headed toward the Yaquina Head Lighthouse. It was cold and windy, but the light and clouds were fabulous. After the gloom from the couple days before, I was in photo heaven. I left the park itself and headed towards a parking area up the highway some, I’d scouted it out yesterday and found I could walk down the beach and get a different view of the lighthouse. It was much less windy down on the beach, the sun was warm on my face, and I was very much enjoying my walk along the beach…which was a good thing, since it turned out to be a nearly two mile hike each way. If I’d only known that I was going to wind up splashing through the water….I didn’t want to backtrack and take a route that would have missed the stream, and instead opted to try to jump it….not very successfully, as my dry pair of running shoes was soon as wet as the pair I’d worn the night before. Oops.
I haven’t been on the road quite long enough yet to be desperate for human interaction so I haven’t really started talking random strangers’ ears off, but I did meet one interesting gentleman on my hike back up the beach this morning. He was jogging on the sand and saw my camera, and stopped to tell me about the sea lion carcass up the beach some that I should stop and photograph. He proceeded to describe it in detail, mangled and half-eaten, with bones sticking out. I thanked him politely and told him I would keep that in mind, although inwardly I was screaming “No!” I have a hard time even seeing road kill, I really don’t want to search out dead animals and photograph them. And I understand that cute little animals are often a midday snack for cute (and not so cute) large animals, and this is just the way the world works, but I certainly don’t want to see it! I was reminded of some dvd I wound up watching part of, “Planet Earth” I think, and these big sea lion type animals (not cute like the ones I saw napping at Seal Rock!) were chasing down penguins and trying to eat them and I was highly disturbed.
But anyways…I digress…I’m starving and need to finish editing and get my butt in gear, I still need to drive up the coast a ways, maybe I’ll get luck and actually get a sunset tonight!. Oh, and I forgot to bring my gas receipts in with me so my fuel statistics will have to wait for another day….
