It was the second day in a row without rain. You can't waste an opportunity like this. Plus, the moon was waxing gibbous and would be full today. And that means that the low tide would be at its lowest point for this month. It will be a spring tide.
What this means is that the tide will be out and that exposes more of the beach. This means more opportunities for anyone looking for shells, tide pools, rocks, whatever.
And that leads to the beginning of today's adventures.
Since we were both up early, I figured let's go and explore a new part of the 7.5 miles of beach that LCO so proudly claims. We were headed to Roads End. It got its name because it was where the road ended on the north side of town. We are a simple folk out this way.
And we really seem to be very, very proud of living in Lincoln City and, particularly, in Oregon. So much so that we put 'Oregon' in some form on this log ... three times.
Goooooooo, Oregon!!
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We were at the beach right about time for the low tide. They even have a State Recreation Site there. It's a semi-new area to us and I wanted to give Carol an opportunity to explore it when the tide was at its lowest point for the month.
Carol was off with her bag, hunting for treasures and me, I was looking for a different kind of treasure. I had my camera and I had the time to just wander around.
And I found this fine fellow, a white-crowned sparrow. Yeah, it was semi-cold this morning. And the wind was blowing. It's always blowing.
Looking north towards Cascade Head.
Whup!! There she goes. Bag in hand and an eye out for adventure.
The tide was out but the waves were still coming in.
One of the treasures she found today. Oh, there were a lot more. You'd be surprised how difficult it is to find these shells intact. First the natural damage and then you have to be lucky enough to stumble onto one before some other treasure hunter finds it.
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Close up of Cascade Head.
The houses along this stretch of the beach are all a bit older than the ones to the south. And maybe just a little bit rougher around the edges.
So that was fun. We were out for an hour or so. Well, Carol was out. I took my pictures and then climbed back into the mini and did some reading. Hahahaha, it was a little too chilly for Little Jackie Sunshine this morning.
Back at home, I checked out the weekly paper, The Oregon Coast Today, and saw an article on the Farmer's Market.
They have a Farmer's Market here every Sunday. It's always at the LC3 (Lincoln City Community Center) and they alternate between holding it outside or holding it inside. It's been held inside for the past few months and today was the first day that it was held outside.
And, so, since it was the second day in a row without rain and there was something vaguely resembling a sun up there in the sky, we went.
Hahaha, remember, carpe sunny days, y'all!!
So let's go see what they have to offer at the Farmer's Market, shall we?
The place was hopping when we got there. Well, hopping as much as the over-65 crowd can make it hop. Remember, the two major industries in LCO, tourism and retirement. And both of those industries were in great evidence today.
Right across the street from the LC3 are the Seven Gables. Now it's a collection of shops and storefront businesses. At the far end is a neat little gift shop called Treasures of the Sea. It's been run by Tom Womack for the past 14 or so years. He enjoys sitting outside and waving to the folks going by on The 101. Plus, he has some good deals on souvenirs and doodads in addition to some good conversation.
Orginally, these were Cottages. Each cottage has a fieldstone fireplace in it.
Built in 1922, it's been a landmark for years since its days as a Motor Hotel.
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But let's get back to the Farmer's Market. There were two or three stalls there selling some produce and eggs. Everything else was arts and crafts.
Like these starfish. Some of them have two tentacles upturned so they can hold your iBook (?) in them. But hold on, there's more!!
Like these clams. Hahaha, that guy spends a lot of time playing with his clay.
Ingenious. Nicely done.
And this lady was working her spinning wheel. She had her bare feet working the pedals to spin the wheel around.
They have a bee farm (?) and can (?) their own honey, etc. They had beeswax and pollen and ...
Homemade wool hats. Pushing the 20s look here.
And some original jewelry. The lady here makes all this. See the long necklace on display on the right? Not the ones on the busts, the one between them. You'll see it again, later.
The glass industry is big in this area; from glass globes to fushion art. Lots of artsy glass stuff but, mostly, it leaves me cold. I'm just not all that impressed with glass art. It's nice but ...
The cool thing is that they have lots of opportunities for you to create your own glass globe or piece of fushion art. For a price.
All kinds of this and that for decorating the ol' home. And all of it made in the local area. We're fast coming to the conclusion that this area attracts artists and other similar type personalities ... it being Oregon and all.
Like this fine fellow, tootin' away on his home-made flutes. There was another guy there selling some home-made didgeridoos. That's the wind instrument developed by indigenous Australians. The digeridoo has been around about 1,500 years and is still widely used in Australia and around the world today. The didgeridoo is sometimes described as a natural wooden trumpet or "drone pipe". Musicologists classify it as a brass aerophone.
I classify it as noisy and not very melodious or pleasant to listen to.
And this lady was crocheting together the selvage edges from the Pendleton fabric that is thrown away. She was really working the needle.
Just past the flutist was the Food Court. Fancy chocolates and other assorted eclectic food groups.
Flanigan was there with his wares. Carol had met him at the last Farmer's Market we went to and liked his art. He has a studio down in the Taft Neighborhood at the south end of the town.
The guys behind Carol were making a HUGE purchase and, oops, didn't have the cash. Ol' Flanigan had to hoof it down to another vendor to make the sale. Meanwhile he left his table unattended. Such is life in the small-town Farmer's Market.
Hmmmmm, I wonder where he got his groovy Hawaiian Shirt?
Paintings and plants.
Up one side and down the other. Hahaha, tell me you don't do that!?! When you're faced with a shopping experience like this, you have to work out some sort of plan, some order in how you'll see everything. Up one side and down the other. And don't cross over. You'll get to see everything eventually.
But we did cross over, towards the end.
Hahaha, the woman in the red jacket, bending over. She was so sure that we'd be back for the necklace that she took it off the display table and boxed it up and had it waiting for us.
Are we that easy to read? Evidently, we are.
Annnnnnd, here it is. A beautiful little songbird soaring by her nest.
After a short stop at home to get oriented, we were off again.
The 101 must have, at one time, cut inland quite a bit between LCO and Neskowin, just up the coast. We found something called the North Old Scenic Highway 101 which starts out in Otis, at the intersection with The Otis Cafe.
It is a two-lane back-country road badly in need of repair in several places.
But it was a great drive ... through the woods.
We would motor on for a while and then stop at a pullout and take a gander around.
On the fallen trees, and only on the fallen trees, were these fungi. They attach to the side of the tree and grow outward, without a stem.
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Carol got down real low to get these pictures. In fact, she climbed down into the gully with the fallen tree. Ahhh, what we do for our art.
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Me? I was standing on the side of the road thinking, "Thank goodness for zoom lenses!!" I'm just saying.
The original bridge. It's really only good as a one-lane bridge now. Way too narrow for a couple of modern cars.
We saw some of our first butterflies. Like this Cabbage Butterfly.
Uh, zoom, anyone?
I was sitting in the mini where we'd pulled alongside the road and Carol was heading back to the car when she stopped ... and froze. Then I heard this cackling behind the mini.
Carol began slowly moving alongside the mini with her camera raised and then the noise began moving to my side of the mini. And, finally, this feral chick popped up, moving away from Carol towards the woods.
Yeah, he took off up the side of the mountain like he'd done it before. Seemed right at home, he did. We didn't see any buildings, nothing, around the place where we had stopped so he is either feral, and doing quite well for himself, or he is free-ranging wide and far from the nest.
It's a crazy world out here in the southern reaches of Portlandia.
The whole drive was pleasant. I'd say, in the hour or so we took to cover the 8-10 miles, we must have been passed by maybe 10-15 cars. Not a lot, really.
I don't know what happened here, but there was the remnants of a building just to the left of these heaps that had burned down.
And we got down off the mountains and started flattening out as we neared The 101.
And the closer we got, the more homes we saw.
Eventually, we came out at the beach resort city of Neskowin.
Celebrating their native heritage and pulling in the touristas.
I don't know, this guy looks a little apprehensive, nervous. Whadya think!?!
This beach is set between the mountains and the resort. There's a narrow path to get down to the main beach which is kind of like a protected bay. Oh, and there's a creek, Neskowin Creek, running down to the beach.
We decided it's a great family friendly beach. First off, there's a lot of calm water for the kiddies to play in. Mom and Dad don't have to worry about sneaker waves in this area.
Second, it was NOT windy. Hey, that's a big deal. Our experience so far is that it is always windy along the beach. ALWAYS!! And that can become rather tiresome. But this beach is protected and the wind, where we were, was negligible.
Proposal Rock.
Fun Facts: Our hero goes by the name Charley Gage, a 19th Century sailor of the high seas.
The lady of our tale is Della Page, daughter of a homesteading family that tended a farm along Neskowin Creek.
The details are light - and change depending on the source as legends mix with fact - but what's important is that one day in the late 1800s, these star-crossed lovers headed out to a basalt sea stack above the Pacific Ocean and decided to get married.
Della's mother was so thrilled she named the prominent landmark "Proposal Rock," a moniker that endures to this day. How much of this legend is true is up for debate but Proposal Rock has become a place associated with romance and popping the most important of questions.
The Neskowin Creek
More Fun Facts: Depending on the time you visit, Proposal Rock might not even be the most famous landmark on the beach.
In the lowest winter tides, that honor belongs to the stumps of the Neskowin Ghost Forest, an entombed collection of 2,000-year-old sitka spruce that become visible when the water recedes. Long ago, these trees were entombed when a massive earthquake dropped the coastal forest below the sand and preserved it in a salt-water brew.
The ghost forest became visible in 1997-98 after a series of storms that swept away layers of sand. "Like gnarled fingers rising from the surf, hundreds of stumps from an ancient forest that has been entombed since the time of Jesus are being slowly unearthed by El Nino's pounding waves," wrote the AP's Brad Cain reporting on this phenomena.
And, back to the more prosaic features of the beach, we see this sand bar alongside the creek.
And you have these constant reminders of just how strong and violent the ocean can be. This large piece of driftwood was put down near the entrance to the beach.
This one was enjoying the ride. With her new necklace.
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And then we were back on The 101 and screaming, at 55 MPH, towards LCO.
And the day had become overcast.
It seems like we did a lot today but, really, it didn't seem that way when we got back home. It was a busy day but it was definitely fun ... and interesting.
There wasn't much going on today but, you know, we made our own fun, so-to-speak. I'm think we'll be going back on the Old Highway 101. Maybe drive it the other way next time. You always see new things if you just turn around once in a while. Besides, I want to try eating at the Pronto Pups in Otis. Hahahaha, oh, yeah!!
Hahahaha, life is good.
Hooah!!
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