Dungeness Spit

The Day after Hoh Rainforest, I headed out to hike Dungeness Spit. Dungeness Spit is a 5.5 mile long sand spit which juts out from the Olympic Peninsula into the Juan de Fuca Strait. At the end of the spit is an old lighthouse staffed by volunteers. The light is automated now, so the volunteers are just there to give tours. Well, really they are there just for the opportunity to live out at the end of the spit. They do enjoy talking about the lighthouse, though. Almost to a painful degree.

The hike was reminiscent of Friends School backpacking trips: a long slog down a beach. This was a little better, though. My pack was lighter, and there was more to look at. For one, the sky was the clearest it had been through the entire trip, and the mountains were gorgeous. Behind me, inland, the Olympic range spread across the sky, and in the direction of the lighthouse stood Mt. Baker, a lone giant on the horizon.


I was keeping my eyes peeled for wildlife the entire time, and I was not disappointed. On the way out I spotted a seal hanging out in the kelp beds. I watched it for a while through my binoculars. It mostly just floated there and stared right back at me. After a while of staring at each other, we wandered off in our separate directions. My camera doesn't have a very powerful zoom, so I wasn't able to take a very good picture of the seal. Here's the best I could do:


At the end of the spit I climbed the lighthouse and looked around for a while. It was cramped at the top and I got trapped in by a family from Tacoma with seemingly endless interest in the lighthouse. But eventually someone called from below that we needed to make way for more tourists, and I escaped.


The walk back was nice, and I took it slowly. The tide was out, so I spent a while exploring the tide pools. They were far less populated than Cannon Beach, but I did find a couple neat things. There was what I assume was a snail of some sort with seaweed growing off its shell. And I also found a small dungeness crab. I think a gull had dropped it on the beach. (you can't really tell, but the first picture here is underwater)


Here's a map of the spit:

Hoh Rainforest

The Hoh rainforest is located on the western side of Olympic National Park, on the Olympic peninsula in Washington. It is a pretty famous destination, and is typically packed with tourists in the summer. I was there on a Tuesday in March, and the parking lots were still mostly full. This could, however, to the extremely fortunate lack of rain that day. In a place that receives upwards of twelve feet of rain a year, I imagine that is a pretty rare occurrence.

Hoh rainforest is famous for enormous spruce trees and the thick layer of moss and lichen which seems to blanket every surface in the forest. Near the visitor center is a short trail called The Hall of Mosses, which gives a brief overview of the local environment. I went through that pretty quickly, but did enjoy the information about "nurse trees." Everyone has seen the phenomenon before, when a tree begins growing out of the stump or fallen trunk of another tree. In the forest here, however, it plays out to a much more noticeable degree. Enormous (around the order of 300' tall) trees fall, and equally enormous trees grow out of the fallen trunk. In the base of many of the older trees there is a void where an enormous log once lay, feeding the sapling through its decomposition. Here's a picture of such a tree:


This next set of pictures also shows a bit about the rampant growth of the area:


The first was, of course, a close up of the second. An example of how those nurse logs get started.

And here are a few from the Hall of Mosses trail:



After the Hall of Mosses, I set off up the Hoh River Trail, to separate myself a bit from the rest of the tourists and enjoy the park in peace and quiet. I hiked about 3 miles up the trail, and only saw 4 other people the entire way. Only two after I was a mile away from the parking lot. There were a lot of people there, but still very few willing to hike more than a couple miles.

The Hoh river trail runs 17 miles each way, so I was only barely dipping my feet by hiking the first 3 miles up, but there was still plenty to see. The river itself has a beautiful turquoise hue, and many little islets to explore. Here are some pictures of the river:



After doing six miles plus a bit of off-trail exploring, I was pretty beat and headed back to the hotel to plan the next day's hike. On my way, however, I was lucky enough to see a herd of elk grazing, something I was disappointed to have missed in the forest itself. Their scat was everywhere on the islets, but I didn't see one until the road out.


On the way out of the park it started pouring down rain, so I think I was very lucky to get in a dry hike. Probably doesn't happen all too often in those parts.

Here are a few more pictures of the park to close on:

Check out the scale of this tree. It doesn't look all that impressive until you notice my backpack sitting at the base.

Here's one of the phone booth at the visitor center. I think they might only have this phone booth so that tourists can take pictures of the impressive mound of moss atop it.


And these two are just nice photos from the trail:

Cannon Beach

I stopped briefly in Cannon Beach on my way north. Not a whole lot to say about it, I was only there to see the sea stacks. The most famous of these is Haystack Rock, the one featured in my pictures.

My favorite part of Haystack Rock was the quality of the surrounding tide pools. There were tons of anemones and even a big starfish. I had been looking for tide pools for days, and these were the first ones to harbor anything other than seaweed.



This is a close up of the rocks in the right of the previous picture. Lots and lots of mussels.

Cape Perpetua

Though the day began with cold wind and dreary rain, the day I spent at Cape Perpetua ended up being the first very pleasant day of the trip. By midday the rain had cleared, making way for sunshine throughout the afternoon.

I first went to Cape Perpetua because Donna, one of the women I was staying with, told me that there was some sort of whale watching event there. Around this time of year thousands of gray whales migrate up the coast. I did not end up seeing a whale. I only briefly stopped in for the event, but I did spend a searching from the top of Cape Perpetua.

I did, however, get to see the other side of the Oregon coast. The previous day at the beach the waves had been gentle and the tide low, but that day the waves were large and crashing violently on the rocks. It is a sight to behold.

Cape Perpetua is a good place for a visit because it has a number of interesting things to do. First, the coastal area has a spouting horn, a hole in the rock that blasts water upwards like a geyser when a strong wave comes in. Second, there is Devil's Churn, which is not as exciting, it is just a channel in the rocks in which waves crash very violently. I didn't get there until a little later in the day, when the tide had gone out a bit, so perhaps that is why I was unimpressed. The most exciting feature of Cape Perpetua, is the overlook at the top. There is an old, stone CCC overlook built at the top of Cape Perpetua, at a height of 800' above sea level. I believe it is the highest overlook on the Oregon coast.

I drove up to the overlook in the morning, but it was too cold and the wind too strong for me to enjoy it. In the afternoon, with the sun shining, I hiked up to the top and was able to enjoy the view for longer.

Here are some pictures. These are some of my favorite so far. Starting with the spouting horn.

And this is the Devil's Churn



This is the view inland:

And this is from a different part of the Oregon Coast that I went to that day, but I think it's a good picture, so I'm going to stick it with these:


And here's a picture of the beach near Florence, where they have sand:

Heading to the Oregon Coast

After Portland, my first stop is in Mapleton, OR. I'm staying at another place I found on AirBnB.com. This time with a very nice lesbian couple, one of whom grew up in Evansville, IN, just like my mom.

Mapleton is not an exciting place itself, but it is located about 14 miles from the Oregon coast. I had some time to kill this afternoon before the women I am staying with got home, so I decided to go and check out the coast a bit.

The Oregon coast is unlike anywhere I've been before. The coastal mountain range runs along the coast creating areas with very dramatic cliffs and stunning overlooks. The water here is apparently always too rough and cold for swimming, but I didn't come expecting warmth, so I was not disappointed. In fact, there was even a bit of sun, which has been something of a rarity up to now.

In one of my guidebooks I had read about Yachats (the ch is pronounced like Chanukah), and it sounded like a neat place. It's a little town on the coast, something like 30 miles north of Florence (which is pretty close to where I was staying). I stopped in at a tiny restaurant called Lunasea and had a beer and an enormous bowl of "slumgullion," a deceptively delicious chowder. The name certainly wasn't appetizing, but the chowder was full of cheese, potatoes, clams, bay shrimp, and dungeness crab meat. And the beer was a Rogue Amber Ale, also delicious.


After my early supper I was feeling energetic and scrambled around on some rocks for a while. I was unable to find any particularly cool tide pools (that would take me a few days), but a rocky beach is novelty enough for me to enjoy myself.

I retired early with the intent to more fully explore the area the following day.

Forest Park

Forest Park is a public municipal park in Portland. It is enormous. One of the largest city parks in the country. The park covers more than 5100 acres and contains over 70 miles of trails. York River State Park, where I worked last summer, is exactly half the size of this park at 2550 acres. So, this is a big park.

I parked at Pittock mansion atop of one of the tall hills in the park. I did not know this until I started research for this post, but Pittock mansion was originally built for Henry Pittock, the publisher of The Oregonian. It's an enormous house with a fantastic view of the city, but I did not go inside. I only looked at it after I'd been sweating my way up hills for several hours in the rain, and I thought I might feel a bit out of place touring the sitting room of a mansion and glancing past the harp to admire the view of the city.

As mentioned above, it was not the best day for hiking. In fact, the majority of the time I was in the park it was either actively raining, or I was hiking through a cloud. But, it was my last full day in Portland, so I had to check no choice but to brave the weather. Also, figuring I would encounter quite a bit of rain on this trip, I went to the Columbia outlet and purchased some high quality rain gear (and at great prices). This stuff is completely impermeable, it's fantastic. I think I could probably sit square in a mud puddle and not notice.

Anyways, I hiked down from Pittock Mansion on a few different trails until, a bit later, I ended up in someone's backyard. From there I turned around and hiked back up the hill, had a bit of lunch, took in the view of downtown Portland, and went home to dry off. All in all, I spent a couple hours hiking and had a good time. It is a gorgeous park, particularly to be attached directly to the downtown of a city.

Here are a few pictures of the park:






Here's a picture of Pittock Mansion:



And here's the view of downtown Portland. It would be a lot nicer on a clear day, but this will give you an idea of the location:

Voodoo Doughnuts

Voodoo Doughnuts is a place in Portland I knew I had to go even before I picked up my first guidebook. I had seen it on an episode of Anthony Bourdain's show, No Reservations. During his Portland episode, he went to Voodoo Doughnuts and purchased something magical and wonderful which I had never thought of before. But, once I had heard of it, I had to have it. The Bacon Maple Doughnut. A doughnut with an actual slice of bacon on top.

Becca and I drove past Voodoo Doughnuts on our first day in town. At the time, there was a line out the door and around the corner. I assumed that this was due to the fact that it was a Saturday morning. I decided that I did not want to stand in the rain and wait for that long, and the line would probably be shorter if I came back the next day. I drove past Voodoo Doughnuts four or five more times during my stay in Portland, each time the line ran around the corner. On my last day in town I decided that I would suck it up and wait in that line (it helped that this was the only sunny afternoon that week).

The line took me close to an hour, but the doughnuts were fantastic. I bought three, which may be a bit gluttonous, but I thought that after waiting in line for an hour, I couldn't leave with just one. Here were my selections (descriptions taken from their website):

The Bacon Maple: Raised yeast doughnut with maple frosting and bacon on top!


The Voodoo Doll: Raised yeast doughnut filled with raspberry jelly topped with chocolate frosting and a pretzel stake!


And finally, the Old Dirty Bastard: Raised yeast doughnut with chocolate frosting, Oreo’s and peanut butter!


And here's a picture of them all on a plate (this scene existed for about one second before I ate the bacon maple bar):


I did not realize until after I had purchased them that these were the exact same three doughnuts featured on No Reservations: Check it out