The Oregon Coast

After our days exploring Portland, we headed back out to the coast, arriving first in the town of Newport, OR.  Newport is definitely a tourist town, you can tell immediately.  Scores of restaurants, shops, and attractions abound.  At the same time, it feels like a real town, like most of the towns on the Oregon coast do.  There is a sense that real people live here still and that the area is not just populated with tourists and second homeowners.  Some of the coast towns are still a bit gritty, in a way that hints at the fact that boats still come in and out and the people in these towns still work on those boats and on the docks.

In Newport we stayed at South Beach State Park, which is one of the largest parks in the Oregon park system.  Even in October, it was till relatively crowded, with a large number of campsites filled.  South Beach has an incredible dune ecosystem on its beach, which is made slightly incongruous by the view of the huge Newport bridge and the town when you reach certain parts of the beach.

In addition to hiking the dunes and exploring the park a little bit, we took Maggie to the Oregon Coast Aquarium to see fish, sea otters, seals, crabs, sharks, rays, and tons of other marine life.  Needless to say, she had a blast.  Running from exhibit to exhibit, giving lectures on every fact she had just learned moments ago.  After the aquarium, as we were crossing over the Newport bridge, a stunning double rainbow appeared as the sun broke through the clouds (see, I didn’t even mention that it was raining…).  The typical legend has it that if one finds the end of the rainbow, a pot of gold awaits.  Well, at the end of this rainbow, jutting out into the harbor, was the Rogue Brewery, which was close enough to gold as far as we were concerned.  We lunched heartily on Kobe beef hamburgers and enjoyed some of their fermented artistry while Maggie held forth on the sights at the aquarium with the waitress and whoever else would listen.

After leaving Newport we headed further down the coast to Sunset Bay State Park.  Rarely is a park more aptly named than this.  The beach at this park is a beautiful protected bay, with quiet water and towering sea cliffs that frame the western sky perfectly for each sunset.  Last night we hiked down to the beach, with a bucket of sand toys for Maggie, so that we could watch the sunset after a beautiful, and surprisingly bright and sunny, October day.  The sunset didn’t disappoint.  There was not a cloud in the sky, save for a few, beautiful bands of clouds out over the Pacific, that appeared to be divinely applied to the sky to magnify the beauty of the setting sun.  

For me, it really felt like a spiritual bookend to the sunrise we watched in South Carolina months ago.  It now feels like we really have come all the way.  This feels like a trip that is beginning to wind down: to set as the sun, to come to a close with the change from fall to winter.  For all of us, it is beginning to feel like it is time to settle down, to find a home, and to start building a new life in that place, whether it be a new place or an old one.

As I stood on the beach with Lisa, watching the sky turn colors, then fade away, I had that palpable sense that this was a moment I would remember for the rest of my life.  One that we will look back on and talk about for years to come when we reflect on this journey.  Probably too because the moment was perfectly framed by Maggie, who was tearing around in circles on the beach, roaring like a lion at her imaginary friends (yes, their still with us), who she was trying to scare.  Unique is one word that definitely comes to mind. 

Today we are off to California and the great groves of Redwoods on its northern coast.  This is the last part of our journey that we have really planned.  We will see the Redwoods, make a quick jaunt back up to Ashland, Oregon, and then, from there, we are completely unsure.  In fact, we are so unsure that we may even engage some reader participation, on the form of a poll, to help us decide the next phase of the adventure.