Coastal Oregon

                        Back in the ‘60’s National Geographic ran articles on individual States. My collection is in storage in Durango, Colorado so I’m not sure which issue it is but when I saw the accompanying photos of Oregon’s coast, Oregon made my Bucket List. That term Bucket List had yet to be invented (the movie of the same name did not appear until 2007) but the need for a collection of favorite places was not wasted on this young lad. Throw in Crater Lake (where we are planning to be later this week) and Oregon gets an extra star! 

                                                So, by now you’ve surmised that we are here on Oregon’s Pacific Coast. We were here two years ago visiting Liz and Beth in the bustling metropolis of Pacific City. Of course, we use the term “city” and “bustling metropolis” lightly here. With only about a thousand residents, a market, several RV parks, a brewpub, and an awesome hardware store, Pacific City has all that it needs. It sits at the base of Cape Kiwanda which sits directly across from one of those destination defining natural objectives, Chief Kiwanda Rock. This “Rock” is one of the three “Haystack” rock formations that help give the coast of Oregon its rugged appearance. They were all once part of the mainland and are volcanic in origin. The ‘softer’ materials that linked them to the mainland have long since worn away leaving these huge basalt boulders to fend for themselves out in the ocean.

                                    Our last trip here was filled with hikes that brought us through numerous examples of seaside environments from a kind of rain forest to oceanside dunes and mini-hardwood forests in between. This time we spent a little more time on the beaches.

                                    The tides here are not as vertically severe as say Maine, but they do have an immense horizontal effect on the beaches. Low tide exposes vast expanses of hard-packed sand that everyone goes out on looking for “finds”. Agate, shells, sand dollars, and the like are constantly being discovered. Liz brought us out on our first night here using a recumbent trike that has a battery power assist. Beth has MS and obviously some mobility issues, and these allow them to still get around nicely. It seems that these trikes stir up interest whenever they go out, so much so that Liz carries business cards of the dealer where they procured them. Case in point, I stopped at the top of the Dory Ramp on our way up from the beach when a man approached and asked where we got them. It wasn’t until we were into our conversation that I noticed that he had a prosthetic leg. I have a feeling that one of these will be on his procurement list pretty soon.

                        So Don, what in the name of “Finding Nemo” is a Dory Ramp?

                        I’m glad you asked that you “old school fisherman” you!     

                        Back in the day there was an entire fleet of these dories that would put to sea every day and row out as far as they needed to in order to catch whatever was running at the time. These include Chinook and Coho salmon, Dungeness Crab, Albacore Tuna and Rockfish. There used to be an old salmon cannery here in Pacific City, started back the late 1880’s and the Dory fisherman would battle the surf every day to launch their boats. Today the cannery is gone and with it most of the professional Dory men. But there are still some card-carrying Dory men that not only fish for a living but now take passengers out for a day on the ocean to try and catch those same fishes that have been their goal since the early days. You must be a member of their organization to use the aforementioned Dory Ramp. This allows access to the beach as these boats are launched and retrieved directly from the surf. It’s a hoot watching them come in and out as this is one of the only places remaining on the West Coast that still employs this technique.

Many old timers in town, along with some long-time visitors, claim Pacific City has changed a lot during the last 40 years. However, compared to other coastal towns, it remains a relatively undeveloped quaint village and has retained everything that originally attracted early settlers and visitors. Pacific City is still unincorporated and has no mayor or city council. Bordered on three sides by BLM land, and the Pacific Ocean on the fourth, further development of the area will be greatly restricted.

It seems that no one gets tired of going down to the beach and with the local population as small as it is, you seem to always run into someone that you know. I went down there yesterday morning to take a few pics and a gentlemen struck up a twenty-minute conversation with me.

Rick is my new best friend 🙂