I’m no stranger to the Pacific Northwest.
Portland for work in 2016. Monterrey in 2018. Squamish, BC in 2019. Cannon Beach in 2020. Olympic National Park in 2021. Yachats in 2022.
However, each time, I was staying in a single place and therefore limited to how far I could go without spending my entire day driving (though I did that, too!). This time, I wanted to see the whole thing. The whole Oregon coast, from the border of California all the way up to Washington state. Now obviously, this is impossible even if you have 2 weeks because not only is there so much to see, but so much is dictated by the weather. I was going in late October, which is always a gamble. Will it be sunny blue skies, rendering the entire middle of the day useless for photography, or will it be gale force winds and driving rain? Sometimes I got both in one day!
I got into Portland late in the evening on Friday, drove to my friend’s house nearby, and crashed for the night. Got out on the road around 10am, full of coffee and good food, and drove the 6 hours down from Portland to California. I did my fair share of gawking as I got further down highway 5 and then onto the much smaller Rt 199 through what was turning into redwood country. Winding roads kept me from stopping along the way, but also the knowledge that the sun was drifting further down in the sky, and forests deep in the valleys get dark, fast.
The Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park was along the way, and the images on AllTrails (my hiking bestie) were spectacular. The Simpson-Reed trail is short, right off the road I was on anyway, and perfect to stretch my legs after a long flight the day before and the drive from Portland.
Walking among the redwoods was everything everyone promised and more. Even when I saw pictures of people standing next to the trees, it didn’t truly begin to convey the scale. And the light! My god the light was something else, the way it streamed through the canopy high above, hitting the forest floor like a beacon.
After the redwoods, I pushed towards the coast once again, stopping off in a few small places before getting to Brookings, Oregon, which would be my home for the next 3 days.
Pelican State Beach - this fog would turn out to be settled in for the evening, shrouding the entire coastline.
I finally checked into my hotel, dropped off my stuff, and headed out to get something to eat before going to Chetco Point Park. My weather app claimed it was “partly sunny,” and I would like to know exactly where the sunny part was, because we were clearly in the not-sunny part. (I had this same experience in Iceland.)
When you’re traveling with limited time, you try to make the best of whatever conditions you’re given, which in this case was pea soup level fog and quickly dwindling light. Moody but difficult to work with.
Driftwood like the bones outside of a dragon’s lair.
The pathway looks all mysterious, but it actually leads to a waste treatment center.
Endless milky skies like there isn’t a hotel right across the way.
It was cold and damp, and the only other person crazy enough to be out there with me was a sullen skateboarding teenager that smelled strongly of weed. After about 30 minutes, I gave up, too, and headed back to the hotel with hopes that the morning would provide some good light.
