Brad needed to work a little today, so the girls and I drove
south a bit on 101 back to Cape Perpetua Scenic Area to check out the beach
hike. This rated a 10 on the scenic
scale of hikes! It felt a little like we
were in Hawaii. (Of course, I’ve never
been to Hawaii, as Audra pointed out, but I’ve seen pictures and movies and it
reminded me of those!) The colors were
beautiful…shades of green from the pine trees and other plant life, yellows of
the sandy beach and the seaweed and algae, blues of the water and sky (Yes! The
sun is out and the sky is blue. It’s
still windy, but warmer than yesterday!), the purples and pinks of the summer
wild flowers and the black of the rock and mussels. We hiked down to the beach entrance, which is
actually comes out onto a rocky area where tide pools linger from the morning tide. We found all sorts of marine life hanging out
here. We spent quite a while on the
rocks before we even got down to the sandy beach. We found tiny tadpole-like creatures, sea
anemones, algae and mussels. Thousands
of mussels were attached to these rocks.
Then we climbed down to the sand.
The girls took their shoes off to better explore the area. This is where we really saw the sea anemones
and starfish everywhere. Some were
purple and some were orange. They were
8-10 inches in diameter. Very
beautiful. It seemed colder down on the
sand. I think the rocks gave off
heat. We hunted and played for a while and
then climbed back up to the trail. The Pacific coastline is so different from
the Atlantic. It is rocky and green and
gorgeous. We did find one other spot to
explore briefly before we headed back to the parking lot.
Then we went to pick up Brad to explore Waldport (where our
KOA is). It seemed like a cute little
town at first, but upon closer examination, really feels depressed. A lot of the shops were not open and it has a
pretty small downtown area. So we
decided to drive on up to Newport. We
checked out and antique mall and then got some groceries.
Cape Perpetua
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