PNW Explored – The Oregon Coast

After our adventures on the Olympic Peninsula we crossed the mouth of the mighty Columbia River into Oregon via the Astoria Megler Bridge (have done a post about it more than a year ago, which you can read here). While new for the family, this brought me back into familiar territory, as I have visited the Oregon coast numerous times while working my project in Portland. We stayed two nights, one in Garibaldi and the second one in Florence. To see a few photos from this stretch of our summer PNW tour, continue after the jump….

Already while traveling the Olympic Peninsula we were confronted with the sea fog phenomenon that is quite common all along the US west coast during summer, when the hot inland air meets the frigid waters of the great Pacific Ocean. While the fog banks cover the shoreline, often all day, just half a mile inland it is all sunshine.

This phenomenon was all too visible when entering Oregon. We crossed the huge Astoria-Megler-Bridge in bright sunshine, while just a few miles back out on the beach in Fort Stevens State Park, the fog covered the beach and the dunes. Which allowed me to capture another moody shot of the wreck of the Peter Iredale, a big sailing ship that run ashore  on October 25, 1906 on Clatsop Spit near Fort Stevens, about four miles south of the Columbia River channel.

Continuing our late afternoon drive down the coast towards Garibaldi, we had numerous great views of the Oregon coastline with the mix of sea fog and sunshine on display.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. True to this saying, we started early morning a hike up Cascade Head, just south of Lincoln City. While starting the hike, the coastal rainforest was still covered by dense fog, but while ascending, the sun started to break through to turn this lush vegetation into a true fairytale forest.

On top of Cascade Head (I described a previous hike up here in more detail in an earlier post) we were in bright sunshine, with views of the Salmon River mouth and the fog covered coastline below.

Even in fog, the Oregon coast has plenty to offer, like extensive dune hiking or comfortable whale watching from shore. There is a resident population of Grey Whales living on the coast around Lincoln City. I never missed out on whales while visiting this stretch of the coast, and also this time we were treated with some beautiful vistas of the whales watching comfortably from the shore, while the tourist whale watch boats were dancing on the big ocean’s swell.

It was already pretty late when getting into Florence, which has a beautiful redone historic old town, with some nice shops and restaurants. From there we visited the Hecata Head Lighthouse, which I also blogged about in a post last year.

We all loved our two days on the Oregon Coast. Hindsight, I should have extended the stay by another day, to leave more room for ad-hoc explorations and a few beach rests. From here on we will cross inland, with Crater Lake our next destination.

All photos taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the 12-100mm F/4 – the images with the long zoom focal length with the PEN-F and the 40-150mm F/2.8.

RAW conversion and post-processing in Lightroom Classic CC.

Wish you all a great weekend!

Marcus

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