Although I would have been happy just walking the beach in front of rental every day we were there, the rest of the group wanted to hike in Oswald West State Park, which was just a few miles down the road.
Once we started walking the old-growth trail to the beach I was glad they had persuaded me to come. It reminded me a lot of the rain forests of Olympic National Park.
Here life and death are irrevocably linked, death giving birth to life timelessly.
The end of the forested trail opens up an impressive cove
and sea caves
It was impossible not to be impressed by this magnificent cove, much larger than the small cove by our rental, but the downside was that it also attracted too many people for my taste, as evidenced by the overflowing parking lots at the trailhead.
Although we haven’t vacationed on the Oregon Coast for the last few years, I’ve visited it regularly since 1967. So, when Jen asked us if we’d like to join her at Arch Cape for a week at the beach, I quickly agreed, especially since we would be joining Logan and Hannah. Arch Cape is just a few miles south of Cannon Beach, a tourist destination I used to visit regularly when I lived in Vancouver.
I’m not sure I’ve ever walked the beach at Arch Cape before, but it certainly has all the characteristics I identify with the Oregon Coast, like these rocky headlands with sea caves.
If I was willing to jump/wade a few streams, I could walk a mile and a half to an even more impressive outcropping and cave.
One day when we hiked this the tide was way out, and it was possible to walk around the headlands all the way to Cannon Beach.
Luckily, at 84 I had better sense than to try that and settled with examining the small tide pools at the base of the outcropping and turning back.
We did a very different hike on another day — hiking an old-growth forest at Oswald West State Park — but I hiked this beach four days of the five days we were there and felt better every day I hiked it. It’s almost as if the ocean’s ebb and flow is Nature’s way of putting us in touch with our Chi.
Local birding is usually slow this time of year, so I wasn’t surprised that I spent most of my time during my recent visit to Theler Wetlands listening to birds rather than actually seeing them.
I didn’t mind too much, though, because most of the day I was immersed in a world of green
occasionally highlighted with brilliant white flowers breaking the shadows
and delicate purple flowers trying to catch rays of sunlight that penetrated the green canopy.
That’s not to say that I didn’t see any birds. I did see a few, and some of them even posed for the camera, like this Barn Swallow
and these Cliff Swallows.
The only disappointing part of the day was learning that John Riegsecker had recently moved and was no longer birding the area two or three times a week. Seeing him and catching up on the latest information about the wetlands was always a highlight of my visits to Theler.
When I was younger, I thought nothing about driving home non-stop from Ft. Irwin to Vancouver, WA. If I got too tired, I’d stop at a rest stop and snooze for an hour or so. At 84 I might still be able to do that, but now that I can easily afford a motel room, I prefer to spend two days traveling from Fresno to Tacoma. An added benefit is that we can stop and bird on the way home.
Of course, just because we can bird doesn’t mean that the birds will necessarily cooperate with us. On our recent trip, we stopped at The Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, but saw very few birds and didn’t manage to get a photo I thought worth sharing.
Our stop on the second day at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge was only fair, but we managed to get a few interesting photos, like this shot of a male Wood Duck who decided he didn’t want his picture taken.
This Common Yellowthroat seemed to think that the best strategy to avoid getting its picture taken was to stay at a distance and use reeds to make it difficult to focus on it.
I don’t think this American Bittern wanted its picture taken either, but it turned to camouflage and blending in with its surroundings to avoid being seen.
It almost worked as my Canon found it almost as difficult as I did to separate it from its surroundings.
The only bird that really seemed willing to have its picture taken was this female Red-Winged Blackbird. It was so close that I had trouble fitting it in the frame with my lens zoomed in as far as it would go.
The Ridgefield auto-tour was a nice ending to a two-week-long vacation.
