A Walk on the Wild Side, or Why We’re Still in Oregon

We’ve been watching the weather forecasts pretty closely, noticing that there’s a high surf warning in effect this weekend, with rain and  high wind probabilities around 80 – 100%.  I found a regional publication online that suggested going to Shore Acres State Park near Coos Bay and staying away from the beaches from today through Sunday morning, since the swells could be as high as 35’.

So, this morning, I got out for my usual walk with the dogs, thinking that the clouds would arrive soon and bring the rain.  When we got back from the walk, I put a beef stew in the crockpot and we packed up a snack bag, loaded the dogs and our snacks in the car and headed out south towards Coos Bay.  The predicted rain still had not materialized, so we kept our fingers crossed that we could find a good spot to watch the high waves without getting soaked by rain.

We found the state park and – well – I don’t know how to convey what we saw.  Unfortunately, pictures really don’t show the awesome power of the show put on by Mother Nature today, but without actually being here, I guess these will have to do.

Can you see the lighthouse in the background?  Yes, the waves were really that high:

 

I wish you could really see that these rock cliffs are very high, but were dwarfed by the size of the waves crashing against them:

 

We found a beautiful walking trail through the woods that reminded us of the Hoh Rain forest:

We walked through the forest, which led to another amazing view at the edge of the cliffs:

Where the waves just exploded:

We found some colorful mushrooms:

Then made our way back through the forest:

And got one more look at the lighthouse with the wild surf in the foreground:

Before we finally decided to move on. We then parked near a beach where we sat in the car and watched the waves for a while longer.  At one point the waves crashed over the sidewalk at the edge of the beach area right into the parking lot where we sat.  However, the rain stayed away!

We got home to a wonderful meal and the task of sorting through a couple hundred pictures, trying to find just a few to share!

Stay tuned, we still have another day or so of the high surf warning!