River Walks the Oregon Coast 2017

Dear Trail Friends, This morning I walked the short distance between Barview County Park and the town of Garibaldi along the railroad tracks. This short walk turned out to be unexpectedly beautiful - here are photos I took collaged into photo 1.    And photo 2 and 3 are ones I didn't fit into the collage    After picking up my resupply box at Garibaldi post office, I met our friend Judy's friend Susan. Susan treated me to a mocha latte (yum) and brought me to her home in Tillamook.  Susan is a Marriage and Family Therapist, not retired.  In addition, she and Lee (a dentist whose office she helps run) met as teenagers and have seven children - some born when they were in their 20s, some when they were in their 30s and the youngest when they were 43.  I commented how unusual it was to have that large a family in our generation (they are younger than me, in their early 60s)  and they talked about the time Susan had t-shirts made for the whole family...

Continued from Proceed at Your Own Risk. June 28. Day 7. Part 1.  Photos 5 and 6 show the boat on its way to fetch me and young Matthew running the boat as he ferries me across. Being not quite as nimble as he is, I did get my feet wet climbing into the boat.      The guide book suggested I "make my way" west on the jetty until reaching a sandy beach. Photo 7 illustrates that this too was a little adventure. Clambering over rocks is not as easy with a backpack (and almost 7 decades of body wear) as it was in my youth.    I liked "Proceed at your own risk." How else do we ever proceed in life? By the way I made it safely through.  Indeed, I realized today's short (8 miles or so) hike was going to end very early, starting as I had at 5 am. So I decided to treat myself to breakfast in town. I asked a couple on the beach, Kurt and Denise, which beach exit to take and they walked me to my restaurant (and also explained a different exit to return on to dodge...

Dear Trail Friends, I arrived at Barview Jetty County Campground in the early afternoon after an easy 8 mile hike.  Photo 1 shows the early morning view north on the beach, with the mountain I climbed yesterday in the distance.    I do love these early misty quiet beach mornings.  I was delighted to share the beach with the little beastie in photo 2 and the bald eagle in the photo 3 collage (who let me take his photo then flew nonchalantly away when I got too close).      I was keenly aware of the patterns and images in the sand - a fish, an angel, abstract designs - as well as the many tide streams and ponds I had to wend my way around until I finally surrendered and took off my shoes. Photo 4 is a collage of sand  sightings.    After my first 3 miles on the beach I reached a jetty and hiked on and found the little beach from which I could request a ferry across the water. My way wasn't quite the right way and I did have to scramble dow...

Continued from The Safe Side of the Fence.  Part 2.  The Safe Side of the Fence.  Part 3. Tuesday, June 27. Day 6.  When I had hiked down the mountain I experienced my first real walk along 101 (my previous walks were short and in towns so low traffic speed.) This time cars flashed by at 60-70mph, and I had to cross the highway several times as the shoulder on my side narrowed. Luckily there was some shoulder - at least a foot or so outside the white line - on at least one side all the way. I quickly relinquished my preference for walking into traffic (so I would see them and could dodge if necessary) for walking on whichever side had a bit of shoulder. Where there was no shoulder there tended to be no flat walkable ground. And people think wilderness is scary - I'll take a bear or a rattlesnake any day over a ton of metal rushing toward me at 60-70 mph. Here's a photo (14) of the highway - my eyes glued to that shoulder to see if I'm going to need to cross again....

Continued from The Safe Side of the Fence.  Part 1.  The Safe Side of the Fence.  Part 2. Tuesday June 27. Day 6. From approx mile 38 to approx. mile 54.3.  Okay there are a few more very cool things I have to show you. Early in the hike to Cape Falcon (I get all mixed up where everything was but I think Devil's Cauldron was part of that hike, along with lots of great glimpses of the coast from above) I saw three bridges that had obviously been worked on by an artist. It made me think of my brother Scott Malcolm who both does formal art (one of his porcelain pieces made it to the Smithsonian) and puts his artistic vision into the work he does on his home, garden and yard. Photo 7 is a collage of the bridges.    On the walk I met a dayhiker, a 64 year old man who owns the music store in Cannon Beach. He also plays and teaches music and we had a very special conversation out there in the green world about the spiritual power of music. He had studied unde...

The Safe Side of the Fence. Part 1. Tuesday June 27. Day 6. ~Mile 38 to ~ Mile 54.3.  Dear Trail Friends Here I am at Nehalem Bay State Park. My tent  is set up in the walk-in hiker/biker camp area and I am sitting in the restroom where there are electrical outlets letting my phone recharge as I write.  I am soooo tired I don't know if I can write this. But it was a very beautiful day and I really want to share it. As far as I can figure (I don't have an app to tell me official trail mileage because none exists for this trail, and the apps I could use to track my personal mileage use too much battery), I only walked about 13.5 miles today. But I walked from 5am to 6pm with only two hours rest - that's 11 hours of walking.  Okay. I just studied the guidebook and it looks like 16.3 miles today. Still you would think I could have walked that in 8 hours, not 11. But on the other hand ... Part of the trail was difficult. There was sticky slippery mud. There were lots of f...

Continued from "To Hug a Point. June 26. Part 1." After I passed Hug Point I realized to my consternation that I was within a mile or two of my destination, the Inn at Arch Cape. And it was not yet 9am. I had radically miscalculated the length and duration of my hike. The Inn at Arch Cape check-in time was 3pm. I was supposed to call for a code for a lockbox for the key. I had been told the inn had been sold and I might be forwarded to a new number, and when I called the number I got a recorded message that mentioned several properties but not the Inn at Arch Cape. I left a message. No one called back.  Well, I thought. I will just go into town and sit down in a cafe and put down my pack and wait. Or maybe I will look at the website and see if I have the right number. I looked and found Arch Cape Inn and Retreat Center and got a real person who assured me someone would call me back. No one did. When I got up to highway 101 it began to dawn on me that there was no cafe. It was...

Dear Trail Friends, I woke up early enough to be on the beach by 6:30am after a very leisurely morning breaking down camp and packing up gear. I was surprised that a number of people including the volunteer guides to the tide pools around Haystack Rock were already on the beach. Thinking about the boy playing  the wood flute, I meandered along the tidepools and gave myself time to look and see what was there. Sea anemones (photo 1) are creatures of great beauty. I do not ever want to take beauty for granted.    In the early morning quiet, the rock shapes stood out against the mist and I found myself particularly moved by the seagulls here and there perched on them.    May I digress a little about seagulls? Trung (the owner of the Seaside Hostel who dreams of starting a school in the art of living) told me that she had watched a mother seagull teaching her child (who was almost as big as she was) to fish. It was when the anchovies were running,  and Mother G...

Dear Trail Friends, What a wonderful magical day. I am starting to wonder if I would enjoy my hikes more if I could make every other day a rest day, a day of wondering and Discovery, without all the forward momentum and heroic effort of the thru-hike state of consciousness.  The irony is that I do not have even one more day of rest planned for the whole trip. It wasnt exactly deliberate. Not were these two rest days at the start.  It just happened.  Let me tell you about today. I woke up later than is usual for me on the trail - around 6:30am. I had slept very poorly, was awake most of the night, a fact I attribute to the huge brownie sundae I consumed after my dinner at the Pelican Brewery. I enjoyed "tsunami stout" beer with dinner (with a slice of lemon) - a delicious dinner of fish tacos. Then I could not resist the brownies cooked with stout with cherries soaked in stout, plus ice cream, whipped cream and both hot fudge and caramel sauce. And despite my sleepless nig...

Dear Trail Friends I am sitting in my tent ( this will be my first night in the new 2-person freestanding tent I bought - to use in sand where stakes will not work well - and for my "hope chest" that Chris will join me on a hike with a few sleepovers.) This is an absolutely beautiful campground. I've come to expect RV camps to be ugly but take a look at photo 1. And they let hikers stay for $10 (if you stay a second night it goes up quite reasonably to their usual rate of $37 for subsequent nights ).    Working backwards, photo 2 shows me having an entirely new experience: backpacking barefoot. Also negotiating my umbrella on a truly crowded beach. I had to laugh at myself. I loved all the joyful people, especially children and dogs, but I felt wildly overstimulated. Too little stimulation my first beach walk, too much my second!   The high today was 93 - hot as Arizona and more humid. Putting my feet in that icy cold ocean water was unadulterated joy.    But to...