The Beach

I have lived on or near beaches and islands most of my life. My earliest childhood memories are  beach memories. Memories like fishing with my father and bringing home our catch (usually crabs) for dinner. Or winter picnics on the deserted beach dressed in our snowsuits drinking tomato soup that my mother packed in a thermos bottle. We were at the beach constantly all year around for my entire childhood. Here is an early beach picture with my father. My home town ended in a bay that looked like this. Then there was a bridge to a long sandy beach that was nine miles long, Jones Beach. Nearby is Fire Island, Long Beach, and a hundred miles of other beaches like the Hamptons.

Since Franklin and I have been together we have lived on a number of beaches and islands such as Sanibel Island, Captiva Island, Highland Beach, and Ft Lauderdale Beach (all in Florida), Main Beach (Australia), Maui, Hawaii,  Manhattan Island and Roosevelt Island, New York, and probably a few more islands and beaches that I have forgotten. Each beach has its own characteristics. This one here in Oregon has large rocks and boulders both on the beach and in the water so the landscape changes with the tides. We have ocean views from every room in our house here and can keep track of the changes without even leaving the house. We even have a large telescope mounted in the bedroom to watch for whales. But we do leave the house. Franklin is walking 4 or 5 miles a day on the beach. Me- not quite as much but I do go down to the beach at least once a day.

The town is named Seal Rock and today  I saw a couple of seal on our beach this morning.

A seal lying on some ricks in Seal Rock

A group of seals in Seal Rock

Newport Seals on their wooden dock

They used to hang out here all the time (which is why the town, more than a hundred years old, is named Seal Rock) but the town of Newport (our closest town about 20 miles away) has nice wooden docks for them downtown in the harbor where they are a tourist attraction so they prefer to hang out there. Several times a year they leave to go out to sea to feed. What Franklin and I call 'going out to lunch." We are currently waiting for them to come back to Newport. I am pleased to see this one seal today and hope he is the first of the hundreds that should be showing up soon.

The rest of this blog is just some beach photos of our beach that I thought you might enjoy. They are all different views from the same half mile of beach.

Oh- that picture at the top of this blog with my name on it? Well, we were at the beach at the public park near our house the other day. There is a cliff there and I guess the sandstone cliff is soft stone. And apparently someone wrote their name- or my name-  in the cliff face.

A photoshopped photo of me on the beach. 

Some people walking on the beach. Possibly Hoa and Byron? 

Low Tide

Starfish and other sea creatures i a tidepool at low tide

Sorry this photo is blurry. I shot it on the wrong settings. The house on the top of the hill with all the windows- that's our house.

Oh- just one last beach picture. This was in the news today. It's a beach in Spain last week

Seal Rock, Oregon

We’ve been relaxing on the Oregon coast for a few weeks and done a few interesting- and photogenic things so far. 

Walking on the Beach
The beach down the street from our house is a very pretty one with lots large boulders in the water, a few streams.

The town is named Seal Rock. Seal Rock is a VERY large rock-- sort of a small mountain jutting into the ocean.  You can see it in the photo below. I heard seals barking there once last summer but never saw any (the seals live a few miles away in Newport). But the rock seems to be a bird sanctuary. There are zillions of birds, mostly seagulls perched  top of it. So naturally there are a lot of seagulls on our beach too, The streams are favorite bathing spots for the seagulls and we often come across bathing parties of seagulls in the stream. Here is a photo of me on the beach watching a couple of dozen seagulls taking a bath in the stream. They were having a real beach party.

Kayaking
We live in a rather rural area- almost half an hour to the nearest supermarket. But we are surrounded by parks and beaches. There are some beaches with no public parking, like the one we use at the end of our street, as well as two public beaches near the house, as well as  two state parks or state beaches within walking distance. There is a third park about 10 minutes drive away and this is our favorite, Brian Booth State Park, This is where we do most of our hiking. There are nice hiking trails and another section of the park has a narrow river for kayaking.

 I went kayaking there last week. Franklin didn't join me this time. It was an early morning trip and he prefers the evening ones which are not available right now. The river is so close to the house that so I have kayaked this river at least twice before and it is always fun.  The sky was overcast with a fine mist coming down for mot of the trip but it didn't make any difference, I had a great time.

We saw this osprey nest alongside the river.  There are several chicks in the nest (on top of telephone poles)

                               I am not a birder but think this is a blue heron.

An Evening Out
One of our friends here in Newport is from Ecuador. She told us about an evening of Mexican music.  I’m from Arizona so this didn’t sound very special but we went anyway. Well, it turned out that I was wrong. It was special. This wasn’t Mariachi music like we hear in Phoenix at all. And the setting was interesting. A room in a community center overlooking the water so we could see the Pacific Ocean at sunset behind them and also on the side of the room.
The first band  consisted of 6 or so Indians from southern Mexico. It looked like they made every instrument themselves out of gourds, clay, bamboo, and big seashells. They had dozens of instruments and the music was not so much about melody as it was about using each of the instruments and harmonizing with all the other players. It was more like a peyote ritual - not even music really. I do have a short video but this blog won't support adding a video. Sorry. I could not get a photo of the sunset because it was backlit, but I have attached a photo of two men in the first group. The ocean is right behind them. 

The second band was more conventional but very good pop music with a very good singer who more or less danced out her songs. I don’t have any photos of this band. Anyway, the evening was one of those rare and wonderful evenings that turn out to be better than you expect them to be.

Picking Blueberries
There is a lot of fruit grown near the Oregon coast, and lots of berries. Most of these berries are wild. So far we have picked blackberries, thimbleberries, salmonberries, strawberries (not wild), and a few ones whose names I don't know and which don't taste particularly good. I have blueberries, blackberries and huckleberries growing in the yard.   But there are only a few blueberries on our bushes so yesterday we went to a blueberry farm to pick blueberries. I bake pies several times a week here. In fact I plan to make one tonight.

Sunset
Our tv faces a wall of windows that overlook the beach. Last night we were trying to watch tv but the sunset was so spectacular that I was completely distracted and took a LOT of sunset pics instead. Sunset comes late here-roughly 10 pm.  Here are few of my photos from last night, including some close ups. I DO use the sunset setting on my camera but I have NOT colorized these photos in any way.  You can see the beach and the rocks in the water at the bottom of most of these shots. There are a few close ups as well.

Trouble in Paradise
Today we have car trouble. It is Saturday so we can't bring the car into the dealership (even if we could get it to start) nor can we rent a rental car until Monday. Fortunately the car is safely tucked in our garage and we are in one of the prettiest places anywhere with a house full of food. So it isn't exactly a desperate situation. The worst thing is I missed the weekly farmers market today, as well as tonight's chosen evening activity ( a side show on New Zealand), But it is an interesting thought to more or less marooned in paradise until Monday morning when the car dealership opens- unable to escape if necessary.