Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area

For Valentines Day Keeley found a run down in Newport, Oregon that she wanted to do, and we decided to use it as an excuse to spend the day in Newport. She'd been there a couple times before, but I'd only been there once for dinner and a brief stop at Yaquina Head Lighthouse on our August Coastal trip. I wanted to go back to Yaquina Head because the area was beautiful and had a few trails worth seeing.

The race was scheduled for 9 o'clock and Newport is 2 hours 30 minutes away, so we had to get up at 5. It was going to be a long one. We got there around 8:30 only to discover the directions to the race were absolutely godawful. No signs, no volunteers, no idea where the race started. They couldn't give an address. All it said was "on Mike's property behind the water treatment plant in big creek park. We drove around and found nothing, and the one road that appeared to go behind the water plant appeared to be government access only. The race was either a scam or run by a complete idiot with no ability to properly organize a race. We saw a runner guy sitting by a gatorade cooler in the park along the supposed course, so I think it was the latter. By the time we saw him though, the race had started. It was not a good start to the morning.

On the plus side we now had more time to fart around Newport. We got breakfast at a beachside grill, and decided we'd spend the day up at Yaquina Head again, seeing everything this time instead of just passing by.

Newport coast

Yaquina Head from Newport

Beach and Yaquina head in the distance

I touched on Yaquina Head in the "Day 3" blogpost for the coastal trip but now that I've explored the full thing I'll go into more detail. Yaquina Head (Pronounced Ya-quin-ah) is a rocky headland jutting 1 mile out into the Pacific Ocean 4 miles north of Newport. It used to be called Cape Foulweather, for obvious reasons (The place is windy as all hell and the Coast is known for winter storms), but despite being a mid-February day we got lucky and it was 50 degrees and sunny, if a little hazy.

There are multiple things to see on Yaquina Head, all are easy to walk to as the entire headland is only a mile long. There is Quarry Cove, Communications Hill, Salal Hill, Cobble Beach, The visitor center, and the lighthouse itself which you can tour on a first come first serve basis every hour in the afternoon. We did all of it.

Quarry Cove is the first thing you can do in the park, you walk down a short hill to a small man made section where the tide comes in and fills up, and goes out leaving tide pools and rocks to climb around on. We hit it at low tide and walked around seeing Sea Anemones.

Communications Hill is the tallest hill in the park, the walk up is on a straight gravel road for about a half mile and the top offers just a view of the beach to the south and Newport. It's a good place to see wildlife, but apparently not when we were there as I saw nothing.

Newport and Agate Beach from Communications Hill

Newport

On trail at bottom of Communications hill

Cobble Beach is the one thing we got to do last time, and we went back. Down a short staircase you can walk on all these smooth wave carved cobblestones and it looks and feels like you are walking on marbles. You can explore the rocks, look at the Sea Lions and birds chill'n off on Seal Rock a bit out to sea. You can touch all the wildlife you can reach except for the Starfish. A park ranger explained the west coast starfish have been hit with more or less Starfish Ebola and 90% of the starfish population on the west coast is gone and what's left is trying to recover.

Chill bird

Wave on a rock

Sea Lions hanging out

Tide pools by Cobble beach

Wave coming from rocks

Cobble Beach and nearby rock formations

Salal Hill from the base of the Lighthouse

Behind the Lighthouse is Salal Hill, a short climb brings you to a great overlook to see the whole edge of the headland and a 360 degree view. Despite the crowds, we were alone up top even though the climb was easy.

The tip of Yaquina Head

Lighthouse

looking back at Oregon. Communications Hill is the closer forested one

Top of Salal Hill looking southeast to Newport

The Lighthouse visitor center has a nice gift shop and museum area to look around in, and includes old videos and a replica of the lighthouse light.

This rock must be this Seagull's personal "poop'n" rock

Lasty, we spent enough time here that we went on the 2 o'clock tour. It was actually my first time in a lighthouse, and the history was pretty fascinating. The Yaquina Head light is one of only 3 lights still working on the coast, it is the tallest (93 feet), and it can send light up to 20 miles out to sea. We had a great tour guide and the tour was way more interesting than I ever expected it to be. The biggest surprise was the light itself. You'd expect a huge bulb or collection of bulbs for the light, but the light was in reality only 2 small 4 inch bulbs and before electricity was lit by a couple of 4 inch flames. What gives the light it's power is the specialty made Fresnel Lens around it. The lens is just a crap ton of specialty prisms that direct the light out horizontally, so a small light source that's 4 inches high and not very strong suddenly turns into a 6 foot tall beam through the lens bending the light. It's kind of amazing. The lens by the way is worth 3 million dollars and is the same lens they originally installed 141 years ago.

We couldn't go up around the outside of the tower and had to stay just below the lens, but you were able to get pictures from a certain stair near the top.

93 feet tall

Inside the Lighthouse workstation

Hallway leading to the tower interior

This sucker is old

View of the bulbs from inside the Fresnel Lens. These tiny bulbs (only one lit at a time) shoot rays of light 20 miles out to sea thanks to the Fresnel Lens. Crazy stuff.

Crazy effects when taking pictures inside a crazy lens

Southeast from inside the Lighthouse

Wide shot of Fresnel Lens interior. It's about 6 feet in diameter. The Bulbs are a couple of inches tall.

Salal hill from the Lighthouse

Staircase

The way up

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After the Lighthouse Tour we drove north on HW 101 into Depoe Bay and went out to dinner right on the ocean. The wait sucked (it was Valentines day) but the view was unbeatable and we were treated to a lovely sunset before the exhausting 3 hour drive home (screw Lincoln City traffic). Got back at 8:30 and didn't make it to 9 before we were asleep.

Forest Park, the goals for this year and some hiking art

This past weekend proved to be extremely wet and ultimately my original plans got scrapped and me and Keeley had to improvise, so we instead took a 10 minute drive into central Forest Park and hiked there.

Forest Park is a giant 8-mile park that makes up most of the Tualatin Mountains on Portland's western border, and the park is mostly in the northern sections. The Wildwood trail is the main thoroughfare, and is roughly 30 miles long as it weaves around the hills through the whole thing. There is also a gravel road called Leif Erickson Drive that goes through about half of it. I biked it once, I was not in good enough shape and it was horrible. I'd imagine it's fun with the right bike though.

Linking the trail and the road are many, many other little offshoot trails and firelane roads, all accessible for walking. The Park proper starts on the North side of West Burnside, but it really begins at Pittock Mansion up that first hill. From here you can go all the way through the park and almost every trail in the bottom 3rd I've hiked at some point or another. If you start in Lower Mcleay park you can go see the "Stone House", which looks like this cool ruin but becomes funny when you google it and realize it was an outhouse. You can access Holman Lane, which is a steep half mile fire road from Forest Park to 53rd Ave, and it's a great way to test your fitness level as the incline is brutal but not impossible. If I can make it to the top without stopping, I know I'm doing alright.

There are so many possible loop options in the park it's hard to go wrong. Most of Forest park doesn't have a view, 99% of trails are just slightly muddy trails through heavy mossed trees and underbrush. Try and catch it on a foggy day, the park really earns it's atmosphere in those solitary moments with the sun trying to fight through the trees and fog.

A couple of times, including this past Sunday, me and Keeley have driven up to the halfway point and parked at the Germantown rd. trailhead. On Sunday we hiked from the trailhead down Firelane 10, up to the Wildwood, back across Germantown road, down the Waterline trail, and back to the trailhead on Leif Erickson drive. It was incredibly muddy but I guess that was to be expected after a very heavy rain on Saturday.

Here are some select pictures I've taken in my many trips into Forest Park

Sunrise from Pittock Mansion

Forest Park Atmosphere

Sunrise from Pittock Mansion

All the photographers taking photos

A good image of how the park looks on the average day

through the trees

So that's a short but accurate look at FP. It's never a bad thing to hike in Forest Park but since it's so close it tends to function as our backup plan on bad days that we feel we need to get out on anyway, which is most weekends. We've set some hiking goals for this year on our big hiking whiteboard. Last year our goal was Table Mountain, a tough but not completely arduous hike. It was more or less the local peak for casual hikers. This year, we decided we don't want to be casual hikers, we want to be serious hikers. That means we are going to go for longer, 6-7 hour day hikes of 10+ miles and 4k ft elevation changes. The gorge's less traveled hikes, the ones that locals who love being outdoors do. Ruckle Ridge. Nesmith Point. If we can do one of these tough, serious hikes once or twice a month from here on out (with our normal hikes in between)  we should be able to hit our two big goals, Eagle Cap and mt. St. Helens. Yes, that Mt. St. Helens.

Last year our August anniversary trip was up the Oregon Coast. This year, we are seeing the final "Wonder of Oregon" we haven't seen yet, the Wallowa Mountains and Hells Canyon. The highlight of the trip will be a 20 miles backpacking trip to Eagle Cap, a high point right in the middle of the range.

The other goal is Mt. St. Helens. Late August, Early September is the plan, after Eagle Cap. Mt. St. Helens actually isn't that long distance wise (only 10 miles round trip) and actually isn't as high as you'd expect. Sure, it's 8 thousand feet, but you only climb up 4600 feet of that. Mt. Defiance (The hardest hike in the Gorge and another goal for the year) is technically longer and harder. I figure if we can do Mt. Defiance and these other big gorge hikes, we can take the volcano. I want to stare down into the crater and say I did it.

On top of that, I've started producing some artwork to celebrate what hikes I've accomplished so far, aiming mostly to capture the most iconic bit to each hike. I'm only done 2 for the moment, but it'll add up as I want to print them out and hang them up next to our goal board to show just what we've done.