Oregon Trip

I just returned from a ten day trip to Newport, Oregon to see my brother Steve and his family. What a beautifully rugged part of the country it is! There was an additional bonus when my sister Sarah, who was visiting her friend Joannne in Seatle, decided to drive down Thanksgiving Day to spend the holiday with us in Newport. There were also several days of great weather to go explore the natural wonders of the Oregon coast.

I met Steve at his office in Newport where he is a coastal planner for the state.

Steve, Lorie, Shadow, and I went for a hike up a canyon with some huge cedar, spruce, and fir trees. It was oozing moisture and was prime fungi territory. Here Steve is showing us how to find cantarelle mushrooms for our Thanksgiving dinner. Cantarelles grow only around spruce trees.

These are not cantarelles. The purple color suggests, "Eat me and die."

More fungi.

This fungi looked like a coral formation.

This gives some idea of the lushness of the coastal forest.

Steve and Lorie above the forest on an overlook hundreds of feet above the ocean. Lorie is the managing nurse for the hospital in Newport.

The view goes far enough to see the curvature of the earth (or is it just my progressive lenses).

This is a blowhole we had to stop and check out.

Sarah (standing) from Alaska and her friend Joanne from Seattle. Sarah's last name is Williams, not Palin, even though she did have to sit in meetings with her.

Steve prepares the cantarelles we picked.

Across the street from Steve's and Lorie's home is Yaquina Head. This is the view looking south on the way out to the lighthouse.

Logan, the older of their two sons, is 16 and quite possibly going to MIT next year. Currrently, he is assisting a Phd after school with software development for hydrophones that study a variety of oceanic sounds.

The Yaquina Head Lighthouse, which we climbed a few minutes later.

Looking up through the Fresnel lens of the lighthouse.

Looking down the free-standing spiral staircase made entirely of cast iron (you can tell I paid attention to the ranger).

Early Sunday morning Steve and I drove up to Nelscott Reef in Lincoln City to watch the annual tow in surfing contest. This was a stop at Whaler's Cove on the way up. This wave is much bigger than it looks.

The surf contest was not visible in the morning due to fog. The reef is about a half mile offshore. Steve decided to take me for a hike to Drift Creek Falls about 12 miles back in the mountains. This is a suspension bridge crossing the chasm above the falls.

This is the waterfall as seen from the suspenson bridge.

The waterfall and the bridge above.

Mossy guardians of the falls.

Back to the surf contest in the afternoon; the wave in the distance is where the surfers are. There is a surfer on this wave which probably is in the 20 to 25 foot height range (remember, it's a half mile out there). On the cliff where we were standing, Gerry Lopez pulled up and stayed awhile. He was known as Mr. Pipeline in the '70's. He dominated Hawaii's Bonzai Pipeline for years. He seemed like a regular guy, my age, who now lives in Oregon.

Sunset from Steve's and Lorie's deck with the lighthouse in the distance.
Looking south from their deck over Agate Beach.

I am now a sushi convert. Here we are at Sada's sushi restaurant, which Lorie claims has the best sushi on the west coast. That's Aaron on the right. He is an eighth grader, champion table tennis player, sax and guitar player, and has a real feel good kind of personality and sense of humor.

One of the sushi plates - yummmm!

Across the street, the bull sea lions were raising a ruckus as they established the pecking order for room on the boat docks. Well, that about sums up my trip as I am out of photos fit to print. Thank you, Oregon family, for your wonderful hospitality! 5 stars!