June, 2021
After this morning’s drive to that super high hill with the Column on top of it and the views of the surrounding countryside and rivers of just a tiny bit of Oregon … after that, and then after lunch back at my campsite, I drove to the beach, the ocean beach, the Pacific Ocean beach. Some of you will know what my goal is, but others of you won’t have a clue. I’m not going to give it away. 🙂
And neither is this fellow below who trotted along beside my big white truck for a little bit on my drive to the beach. I finally stopped the truck, opened the passenger window, hoping to get a photo. He stopped too!
The photo below is a portion of the photo above, cropped and enlarged. Notice that there are TWO horn knobs on each side of his head in the photo below. I’ve not seen that before, though there are lots of things that I haven’t seen before. Is this usual? Is this unusual?
He’s a handsome fellow that’s for certain.
Approximately a nano-second later, he noticed something behind him and turned to look.
I zoomed in with my camera lens to get a detailed look at him. The photo below is not a cropped section of the photo above … you can prove that by looking at the shadow of his ear that shows up on his back in both photos … it’s different in the photo above from the photo below. He really did stand there for several seconds staring at the roadway behind us. I liked that he was more concerned (or maybe just more interested) in what was going on behind us than he was concerned about me.
What a gorgeous guy. As always, click on photos to enlarge them.
And then he trotted off into the trees, and I continued on down the road in my truck. During this 15 minute drive this afternoon, I was completely inside the campground/park of Fort Stevens State Park (it’s huge). I was driving from my campsite and heading to a parking lot that was right next to the ocean beach … in fact, it was ON the ocean beach. Even the last bit of roadway out to the beach had beach sand all over it … and the parking “lot” was solid beach sand.
Here’s a video (below) of the last 5 minutes or so of my drive.
I’ll apologize right off for the reflections on the windshield of the truck in the video. It’s the top of my dashboard that’s reflecting. I’m not sure how to stop that but I think if I get a soft black cloth and cover the top of the dash with that cloth then that reflection won’t happen. I’ll give it a try.
But otherwise, the video below is the last portion of my drive from my campsite out to the ocean beach.
The road took me through acres and acres of Pacific coast trees, all of it inside this huge state park. Eventually you’ll see vehicles parked directly in front of me, but I don’t go straight out there to where they are parked. I had scoped out that area before-hand to find that the road into that parking lot takes a nose dive down into a large dip in the sand and then stops at a concrete wall, so I turned left instead and drove up onto the beach that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. Wow. I wish I’d had my truck windows open so that I could share the sound of the ocean with you. But I hope you enjoy the view.
About half way through this video, notice the separate walking/biking trail off to the left of the roadway. This place has been so well planned and executed and is so welcoming to everyone.
AND, at the very end of the video, you’ll see what attracts so many people to this particular beach. The tide was in, the tide was high, so the attraction is partially submerged. But I will return another day this week at low tide and get lots of photos to share with you. As usual, click on the large square in the lower right hand corner of the video to make it play in full-screen mode. Turn your sound on, but please ignore my grunts and groans, ha! 🙂
Watch the video first … then you can read the following paragraph here. But watch the video first.
That ship is an old, old steel-hulled sailing ship (built in 1890) that ran aground here during a massive Pacific Ocean storm many years ago (1906 actually) and it has remained buried in the sand in this “graveyard of the Pacific” ever since. As mentioned, I’ll be back out to this beach in a day or so, when the tide is low so I can get right next to the bow of that ship. Stay tuned.