Shipwreck!

For the President's Day holiday, Jenny and I spent a much needed day at the coast. We started at Cannon Beach.
Suddenly, within a matter of a minute, a thick misty fog rolled in.

We decided to drive up the coast a mile to Ecola State Park. By the time we parked and grabbed our picnic lunch, the mist was already clearing.

After a quick 3 mile hike, we left Ecola and headed north to Ft. Stevens at the most northern tip of Oregon to see the "Graveyard of the Pacific" where over 2,000 ships have sunk since 1792.

(Apparently there's a rather nasty bar and unpredictable currents where the Columbia River flows into the Pacific. They've since built a jetty and dredged it, but it's still not the happiest place to navigate.)

This wrecked ship is the Peter Iredale which ran aground in a densely foggy storm in 1906 - thankfully, no one died.

(I really liked it.)

Sidenote: Don't let the flipflops fool you - it's not as warm as it looks. The air was decidedly cooler and the wind had picked up significantly the closer we got to the very tip of Oregon -- I've got another coat on under the sweatshirt.

Now.Then (1906).





The south jetty to control the currents where the Pacific Ocean and Columbia River meet.
The cold, desolate mouth of the Columbia River. (The land across the water on the left is Washington, on the right, Astoria, Oregon.)

A bit of an adventure coming home... drove on a deserted old logger road for 40 miles. A bit eery, we passed only 2 others cars the entire time on that road. We did, however, see several large herds of elk... but no pictures -- too dark by that time of night.

Overall, a very good day indeed.