Oregon Coast: Heceta Head Lighthouse

After our hour-long stop at Sea Lion Caves, we continued just barely north to Heceta Head Lighthouse which we had seen from the Caves. Stopping to photograph this most photogenic lighthouse was next on my list of things to do en route to Yachats. There is a pull-out about a kilometer south of the lighthouse that makes a good spot to shoot some photos, so I pulled over there before heading to the parking lot for the lighthouse beneath the Cape Creek Bridge.

The sea fog coming in on the strong sea breeze was intermittent, one moment brilliantly sunny and the next totally gray. I took advantage of the fog to get what I think is a wonderful shot of the lighthouse doing its job, standing as a sentinel in the mist.

Heceta Head Lighthouse from Pull-Out

Heceta Head in the Fog

Cape Creek Bridge from Parking Lot

Cape Creek Bridge from Side of Heceta Head

Sea Stacks at Heceta Head Parking

Along the Beach, Large Swaths of
European Sea-Rocket, Cakile maritima

Sea-Rocket Detail, Rarely This Fuschia

Beachside Mats of Silverweed, Argentina anserina

Lighthouse Keeper's Home, Now a B&B

Gorgeous Himalayan Blackberry Blooms, Rubus bifrons
Super Invasive, Super Delicious, but No Ripe Fruit

Mats of Oregon Manroot Vines Blooming, Marah oreganus

Manroot Close-up, Looking Like Cucumber Vines
Also Called Western Wild-Cucumber

European Honeysuckle, Lonicera periclymenum

Stunning Rosa rugosa

Coyote Brush, Baccharis pilularis

Pearly Everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea

Beautiful Crocosmia, Sadly Invasive

Water Parsley, Oenanthe sarmentosa

From the lighthouse, it already being 5:45 and pushing into Happy Hour, we decided to go straight into Yachats rather than stopping elsewhere along the coast, saving those stops for later.

Oregon Coast: Sea Lion Caves

This post continues the tale of our escaping the brutal heat of Central Oregon by heading to the Oregon Coast in Yachats. In the previous post, we drove from Bend via the McKenzie Highway to Eugene where we had lunch. After lunch at the excellent Gratitude Brewing, we drove basically due west from Eugene on OR 126, continuing along the road that we had followed down out of the Cascades into the Willamette Valley and Eugene.

The trip on 126 was largely uneventful and certainly not as scenic as going to the coast on other routes such as OR 26 out of Portland or OR 18/22 out of McMinnville. The Coast Range is clearly much lower and easier to traverse in this part of the state. Starting at Mapleton, the pretty vistas of the Siuslaw River heading downhill out of the mountains into Florence on the coast made up for the lack of views that the lower Coast Range mountains offered.

In planning our trip, I looked for things to occupy our time along the route, knowing that we could not get into our room until after 4pm, especially things north of Florence on our way into Yachats. As I developed my list and winnowed it, I kept coming back to Sea Lion Caves. I struggled mightily, wrangling with the possibility that it might be a totally cheesy tourist trap designed to part cash from suckers à la P.T. Barnum. 

In the end, I decided, "What the hell; let's go for it." The overarching decider for me was that Ann and I have never seen a Steller's Sea Lion before, having struck out all along the Oregon Coast and in Alaska. And I have got to say that I came away fairly impressed. Though it has all the hallmarks of a tourist trap, Sea Lion Caves is a great place to view the sea lions and get a bit of education in the process. As we will see in the photos below, it also let me get up close to a colony of Brandt's Cormorants, close enough to see their characteristic blue faces.

We parked on the inland side of highway 101 and walked across to the gift shop/entrance on the ocean side. Once inside, I still had "Tourist Trap!" echoing around my brain, but still, we got in the short line at the register among all the touristy schlock for our entrance tickets. From there, we exited the back of the building and had a choice of turning left (south) or right (north) along the paved path running along the top of the cliff.

To the left is an overlook onto a large sea lion haul-out and to the right is the elevator going down into the cave complex where the sea lions hang out. We chose first to walk south, saving the caves for later. As you will see in the photos below, it was alternately sunny and then foggy, a harbinger of things to come later in the day.

Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea

The Less Common White Form

Looking South Toward Florence

Salal, Gaultheria shallon, Still in Bloom

Gold, Fuschia, and Green: Fireweed, Chamaenerion angustifolium

Common Heal-All, Prunella vulgaris

Walking along the cliff top before descending to the platform overlooking the sea lion haul-out, we could hear hear the colony of sea lions barking and murmuring long before we could see them. Having seen and heard a lot of the really vocal and smaller California Sea Lions along the Oregon Coast, I was not surprised that their larger cousins were nearly as vociferous and raucous. We spent several minutes watching their antics.

This Haul-Out Hosted Perhaps 150 Steller's Sea Lions

This Bull was Especially Noisy
Unlike the Bigger One Passed Out in a Pile of Cows

This One Hauled Out Barking Constantly

Having watched the sea lions and their antics at the southern haul-out, we headed back to the overlook just behind the gift shop, before heading north along the path for the elevator down into the caves.

Our First View of Heceta Head Lighthouse and the Incoming Fog

Seaside Daisy, Erigeron glaucus

Cows Clover, Trifolium wormskioldii

Bumblebee on a Bull Thistle, Cirsium vulgare

Sea Holly (aka Rushleaf Eryngo), Eryngium petiolatum

Hairy Evening Primrose, Oenothera villosa

At the elevator doors, it was a couple-minute wait for the car to arrive topside and then a fairly quick descent of about 200 feet. When the elevator doors closed, the lights dimmed a great deal to prep our eyes for the darkness below. Exiting the elevator, we walked down to a landing with the main cave to our left and a flight of steps leading up to the right. First, we walked left to see the sea lions, a couple hundred strong, piled up on the rocks. The light is so low that I had to bump the ISO on the camera pretty high. As a result, the pictures are a bit grainy, but they give a good idea of what you'll see.

Piled on a Rock in the Middle of the Cave

Bull Posturing While Cow Attends to Her Pup

After seeing the sea lions, we walked back and up the steps that were originally to our right passing several educational exhibits on our way to a viewpoint looking out of the caves to the north. This was, in fact, the original entrance to the caves before the elevator was installed. The viewpoint looks out over a colony of sea birds directly at Heceta Head Lighthouse.

Heceta Head Lighthouse from Inside Cave

Expand to See Brandt's Cormorants Blue Faces

Common Murres and a Few Cormorants

Growing on Cave Walls Above Viewpoint
Magnificent Monkeyflowers, Erythranthe grandis

Inside Cave: Light Glowing in the Fog at Heceta Head

We returned to the surface and back to the car to continue our drive into Yachats. Next stop: Heceta Head Lighthouse in the growing fog.

Bend to Eugene: Dee Wright Observatory and Gratitude Brewing

To beat the terrible end of July heat in Central Oregon, we decided to spend a couple days at the Oregon Coast where the daily highs were forecast to be at least 30 degrees less than at home in Bend. I planned to take the slower but more scenic route through the Cascades to the coast. This post covers the trip from Bend through Sisters to Eugene.

Ever since I first read about the wildly scenic McKenzie Highway, OR 242, that runs west-south-west from Sisters to the junction at Belknap Springs with OR 126 heading south out of Santiam Pass, I knew that I wanted to drive it. The highway is only open and snow-free for a very few weeks out of the year, from late June through the end of October. Our trip from Bend to Yachats was the perfect opportunity to explore this phenomenally scenic byway.

OR 242 leaves Sisters at its northwest corner just beyond downtown and the Sisters Ranger Station if you are coming from Bend. At first, once beyond the two schools in Sisters, the road rolls and climbs slowly through a beautiful forest of widely-spaced Ponderosa Pines undergrown with Snowbrush. On our drive up to the pass along this bucolic route, we saw dozens of cyclists, coming downhill from the pass into Sisters, enjoying the downhill and the shade of the tall pines.

The further you ascend the road, once a wagon trail over the Cascades, the more it twists and turns, with the landscape becoming progressively harsher. The tall Ponderosas give way to a sparse scattering of Lodgepole pines until about ten miles in, all the tree cover gives way to vast acres of inhospitable lava and expansive views of Mount Washington. Back in Bend, Mt. Washington appears to be crowned by a steeple, but up close like this, it becomes clear that the steeple is really a large spire of hard stone in what is obviously a deeply eroded volcano.

Mount Washington from Southeast

Rockscape Around Which the Road Twists

The next thing you know, you have climbed into the saddle of McKenzie Pass just at about 5300 feet with parking to the left and the Dee Wright Observatory to the right. The Pacific Crest Trail passes through the saddle a couple of tenths of a mile beyond the observatory and the pass is ringed on all sides with vast volcanic mountains and buttes.

McKenzie Pass: Equidistant Between North Sister and Mt. Washington

Dee Wright Observatory

The Dee Wright Observatory is a Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps open shelter just above the pass. It is a circular tower built of lava with an enclosed first floor and an open second floor. The second floor offers 360 degrees of view of the surrounding mountains and hosts a circular brass peak finder that locates each of the peaks in view.

The lower floor has window openings framing views of the major peaks, with small tube sights through the walls focusing your gaze on each peak. It is a wonderful learning tool for those of us who want to be able to name the geographic features around us. Unfortunately for us, a lot of haze from the huge wildfire at Yosemite moved in the night before and limited our views. On a clear day, it is possible to see Mt. Hood 77 miles way up north, but on our visit, nearby (29 miles) Mt. Jefferson was looking very hazy.

Artsy Shot: Washington left and Jefferson right

Peak Finder in Front of the Sisters, North Sister Most Prominent

Peak Finder Detail

Annie and the Sisters

Informational Plaque Inside Shelter

Mt. Jefferson Over Ann's Right Shoulder

Inhospitable Terrain with Black Butte Right

Leaving the parking lot and headed west downhill for the first time in 15 miles, all of a sudden the landscape began to change. Whereas the east side is all Ponderosa Pine lower down with scrawny Lodgepole Pines higher up, the east side reverts very quickly to Douglas Fir, the most common tree in Oregon. A minute or two beyond the Pacific Crest Trail, we spied a lot of Beargrass growing on the roadside, a plant I haven't seen in many years.

Beargrass, Xerophyllum tenax

From the pass, it is almost 5000 feet of descent to Eugene and the lower we got, the more we found ourselves in typical west side wet Douglas Fir forest. Only after twisting lower and lower would we see Big-Leaf Maples and then finally open Oregon White Oak savannahs so typical of the Willamette Valley.

Once we turned left onto 126 for the straightish shot west into Eugene, we would follow the delightfully scenic McKenzie river all the way to its confluence with the Willamette. By this time, it was time to deal with our hunger, especially since we ate no breakfast. Finding lunch in Eugene was the next item on our agenda.

Traveling through the Cascades, if you want to search for something on the internet or even use your phone to navigate, you quickly learn that this is a non-starter. Signal is nigh on non-existent. It was only within a few miles of Eugene that we got enough signal for Ann to search for a place for a quick lunch and a beer. Not knowing the beer scene in Eugene at all, Ann made a totally random choice of Gratitude Brewing in downtown near the U of O.

We parked around 12:30 immediately in front of the small place and pulled up a couple of seats at the empty bar. Quickly, we found ourselves sipping two really excellent beers and I don't say excellent lightly, coming from one of the country's great beer towns. If this place were in Bend, it would probably be our favorite haunt. Furthermore, our lunch sandwiches were better than just about any pub food in Bend, not bad for choosing a brewery at random.

Needing to get on the road, we finished our lunch and our beers and got a couple of crowlers to-go, the plan already forming in my mind to have happy hour overlooking the ocean with some salami and cheese that we would pick up en route out 126 to the coast.