In which I learn that if you walk 15 minutes north you can
get to a way better breakfast in Nye Beach, and you can walk there and back on
the beach from your hotel, popping seaweed with your feet as you go. It is the bubble wrap of the sea.
Today will henceforward and forevermore be known as the Day
of Churning Waters. Here's a capsule
list of the ones we visited.
The Devil's Punchbowl
The Devil's Churn
Thor's Well
The Spouting Horn
The Devil's Butthole
The Devil's Chumbucket
Zeus' Toenail
(OK, several of these aren't real, but we feel they could
be.)
As noted earlier, this stretch of the Oregon coast is justly
famous for its fantastic rock formations, unbelievably broad beaches, rolling
surf, and general magnificence. It is
apparently a resort area, but I have to say if this is high season man it must
be quiet around here in the winter.
Near the Devil’s Punchbowl – a variation on a standard feature on this
coast, which is basically a giant hole in some rock into which the surf pounds
dramatically and then drains out – we see some surfers bobbing desultorily in
the water. They don’t seem that
interested in the waves but there are a lot of them out there so we guess
something will happen sometime.
The Yaquina Light confounds us: Ya-KWIN-ah, Ya-KWEEN-ah, Ya-KEEN-ah,
YA-kin-ah? But here we do in fact see
evidence of whales, which is kind of exciting.
Also, there are excellent tide pools here on Cobble Beach, which is made
entirely of smooth massage stones and upon on which I feel an overwhelming urge
to lie down.
Then we head south toward Cape Perpetua, having eschewed the
apparently world-famous aquarium in favor of outside adventures. We check out some more precarious tide pools
than those at Cobble Beach, having been warned to be aware of sneaker waves and
we’re not talking Izzy’s gold Converse. These pools are around lava-formed rocks,
which are rough and difficult to walk on.
Also, it is super windy and the water churns up into this greenish foam
which might look interesting on a dinner plate but does not entice one to
frolic in the surf. But the tide pools
are filled with neon-green anemones and bright purple sea urchins and little
fishes and Izzy even saw a crab. They
are endlessly fascinating.
Have I mentioned that our car on this trip is a Subaru like
we have at home? So we feel very
comfortable in it except that my window is super-sensitive and every time I
touch the switch it goes the opposite way from what I think I am asking it to
do – this is greatly hilarious for the back seat.
Those oysters are even better fried, as it turns out at
lunch in the impossible-to-pronounce town of Yachats (ya-HAHTS). This town is also going to be famous
forevermore as the place where Bill got his phone fixed for $15 (by “my man J.D.!”),
which made him very happy and gave us all time to eat more Tillamook ice cream.
We try to take a hike from a high vantage point along the
coast to another big tree, but we seem to have missed the cutoff somewhere and
after going a mile or so downhill, and running into some folks who suggest that
we may have missed the trail, we head back up.
It turns out that all the distances marked on the map placards are from
the Visitor’s Center, not from the point where YOU are. So that mile to the Big Tree? It was actually a mile from the Visitor’s
Center that is about another mile and a half down the steep hill from where we
are.
But here’s the thing about Packers fans: they are always friendly and they always help
you out. That couple who helped us sort
out the trail? They stopped to chat
because they saw Izzy’s 52 jersey. So we
had a nice natter about the Pack (they live in Arizona but he’s from Mequon so
. . . and they’re going to see them play da Bears this fall). GO PACK GO!
Izzy also keeps us going on the trail with tales of – wait
for it – camp! What else do you want to
know, she asks. What else don’t I know,
I think?
We’re not done with the coast yet, the road of which we have
driven back and forth on approximately 17 times today. Because we’ve been waiting for the tide to
come in enough so that we can see the Spouting Horn and Thor’s Well. The former is a bust – you need a good high
tide for that – but the latter is spectacular.
The water fills up the hole with great crashing waves, then drains right
out. You can’t get close enough to see
the drain holes (sneaker waves! Also,
just wet and windy and rough surf.) But
it looks really cool and I burn up some serious data on my phone taking
repeated videos of it.
Gracie’s Sea Hag may have been a classic dinner destination
for some Chowhound a long time ago but it has lost its luster. Somehow Bill’s Dungeness crab is dry and
while Peter’s Halibut Louie is sort of normal temperature, mine is volcanically
hot. A really fine marionberry pie makes
up the difference.
I’m not sure I’ve mentioned marionberries yet but they are a
principal reason to visit this part of the world, if the rest of this journal
isn’t enough to convince you. They are
like a blackberry but somehow different,[1]
and they only live around here. This
time of year you can get marionberry jam, and marionberry ice cream, and
marionberry French toast/pie/crisp/cobbler etc.
We decide that it will be very important to eat our weight in
marionberries. They have become the foie
gras of this trip.[2]
[1] Peter delights in researching and telling us that the
Marionberry is a direct descendent of the Olallieberry and the Chehalem
Blackberry, which are in turn and respectively descended from the Loganberry
and Youngberry and the Himalayan Blackberry and Santiam Berry. I could go on or you could just learn more here.
[2] The Foie Gras rule (per its creator, Paul
Kafka-Gibbons): if foie gras is on the menu,
order it. This rule might be flouted if
the foie is messed with – like “a sauce of foie gras, veal reduction, and kumquat
essence”). But seared, torchon, any prep
where it is central: just order it.
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