Having come from the restaurant business, Valentine's Day has always been a thorn in my side. It's day on which Ann has wanted me to pay some special attention to her and it has heretofore been the busiest workday of my year, serving hundreds of couples celebrating the day. This year would be our first Valentine's Day together, ever.
And so I wanted to do something special. I made us some pastrami sandwiches on rye, grabbed a bottle of cold Prosecco, and we headed for the coast with the idea to go see the lighthouse at Cape Meares in Tillamook County, the county just northwest of ours. I wasn't sure that the weather would cooperate, but then, this is Oregon in the winter.
While the forecast was for partly cloudy weather with almost no chance of rain, it certainly rained for big stretches of the drive out Highway 18 in the direction of Lincoln City. By the time we hit the coast range, we could see light snow at elevation. At Grand Ronde, we turned northwest to cut through the mountains and to join Highway 101 at Hebo, where we headed north for downtown Tillamook. It was sprinkling on and off along 101 and pretty misty as we were leaving Tillamook headed west for Netarts and the coast.
The sun had just popped out by the time we reached Netarts and turned north for Oceanside and Cape Meares at the end of the road just beyond. Just as soon as we grabbed our mini-picnic out of the truck, it started raining fairly hard, so we retreated back to eat lunch in the truck. Fifteen minutes later, the sun was out again, but all afternoon, we watched raincloud after raincloud blow in off the Pacific and unload somewhere along the shore.
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| Cape Meares Lighthouse |
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| Three Arches Rocks from Short Beach, Oceanside |
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| Quite the Welcome Sign to Cape Meares |
From the parking lot at Cape Meares, you can look down a straight trail and see the lighthouse. In the other direction are located the restrooms and the Octopus Tree, a very old Sitka Spruce with no central trunk. It's much more impressive in person than it is in the photo with no frame of reference for how big it is.
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| The Octopus Tree |
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| Annie Contemplating Cape Lookout |
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| Gorgeous Panorama Looking South |
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| We Retreated to the Truck for Prosecco and Lunch |
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| From the Overlook Looking North |
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| Panorama Looking North |
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| Watching the Waves Pound the Rocks |
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| Full Grown Spruces Atop the Cliffs |
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| Yet Another Rock |
It's hard to appreciate how much swell there is in the Pacific here until you see it crash into a rock and send spray 40 feet in the air.
I've seen a bunch of Fresnel lenses (I admit to being fascinated by the optics/physics behind them) in my life, but this is the first time I've seen one with red glass. It turns out that this is the only one on the mainland and there is another in Hawaii.
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| Unique Red and White Fresnel Lens |
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| Another View of the Lens |
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| Another Look at the Rocks |
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| Dramatic Backdrop for Sitka Spruce Cones |
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| Pink and Green Sedum oreganum |
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| Three Arches Rocks, Rainstorm Behind |
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| Oceanside From Cape Meares |
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| Annie Looking Out to Sea |
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| One Parting Shot |
