the most of the coast

I have just a few more photos of our trip to the beach. 

I always take a lot of pictures of the surf, even though a lot of them look similar. I can't help it.  There's always some new angle that appeals to me in a different way than the picture before.

Same holds true for moss...

Fog...

And beautiful light.

Okay, Pacific coast...see you next year!

a day at the beach

Happy New Year!

Todd and I are back from our yearly trip to Portland, Oregon.  I'm normally incredibly organized when I travel, with lists of items for every contingency.  I bring medicine in case we get sick, Band-Aids and Neosporin in case we have cuts, extra books and notebooks/pens in case we have unexpected down time, checkbooks in case we lose our debit cards and need money, four or five emery boards in case our nails magically grow several inches in two week's time and need to be tamed...you get the idea.  But this trip, I forgot something crucial. 

We were at Multnomah Falls, and I was having a double rainbow moment.  Not like this double rainbow moment, but a genuine one, nonetheless.  A double rainbow was lighting up the sky above the falls parking lot!  I clutched my side, and realized that I had forgotten my camera.  Argh!  Thankfully Todd had his iPhone, so I was able to get a serious of images, but they aren't as clear (whimper) as the images that my camera would deliver.

Still...

One rainy day, we decided to take a trip to the beach.  It's about an hour and a half from Portland, and I try to make the drive whenever I'm in town, even if it's in the winter.

I love the beach.

I love going to the little coastal towns - some touristy, some heartbreakingly dilapidated, some artsy and dignified.  They all contain charmingly-shingled wooden houses.

The beaches are all different, too.  Some are sand, but most are at least partially rock.

You can usually find amazing combinations of sea weed and kelp.

There's always beautiful moss - on rocks and growing on/hanging from the trees.

You can find beautiful pieces of driftwood, or even 'regular' wood whose inner beauty has been exposed by the push of the waves:

You can usually find sand dollars and pretty rocks, and sometimes, a mysterious sea creature that no one can seem to identify:

Learning his identity is going to be one of my goals this week!  We saw many of these along the coast, and other visitors were looking at them curiously.  One hypothesis is that they're from Japan, part of the flotsam coming over in the wake of the tsunami.

The tsunami hit Japan a little over a year ago, and evidence of it is still washing up on Oregon shores.

Pretty meandering paths are common...

And, of course, on rainy days you get a lovely mist over the water.

My very favorite beach, which I may have mentioned before, is Hug Point.  It's a dangerous beach, with sneaker waves, rip tides, and uneven ground.

But it has beautiful trees running along the coast:

 And a beautiful sea cave:

And an angry, frothy surf that I love to watch.  Even when it appears calm, the water sneaks up on you. 

Although there are no overt signs of danger, the water comes closer...

...and closer.

That was no sneaker wave, but a demonstration of how dangerous the surf can be here.  I was nearly washed off my feet several years ago by a surge of water that came out of nowhere and did not appear as the high waves that would normally indicate danger.  That's the sneaky thing about sneaker waves...they just look like a typical low roll of water that washes up on the beach, but they come quickly, and with a lot more power - and water - behind them that you would expect.  I heard local news stories of people being injured by sneaker waves when I lived in Oregon.  Here is a video that shows just how dangerous they can be.

We left Hug Point and traveled further down the coast.  Sea gulls were everywhere:

In some towns, the piles of clam shells were several feet high!

 We saw a pretty sunset...

...and went home for a clam feast.

 A perfect end to a day at the beach!

Portland: Part I

We're home from our Christmas in Portland! Besides visiting friends and family, we had an opportunity to do a little sight-seeing. We went from seeing Christmas trees...

...to the lovely fir and pine trees that pepper the Pacific Northwest.

Our first outing was to the Oregon coast. It didn't matter if it was raining in Portland, because the coast has a way of making its own weather.

The closer we got, the clearer and brighter the sky became.

At last...sun!

I love the Oregon and Washington coasts. They're quite different from the coastline in California. It's much colder and rockier...but that doesn't stop me or anyone else from hiking the ocean's edge.

Haystack Rock juts 235 feet above the surf. It's frequently shrouded in mist, but we had a lovely view.

The foaming waves may not look too dangerous, but the Oregon coast is known for 'sneaker waves', or huge waves that suddenly appear from benign surf. Many people have been washed out to sea because of them, and I, too, was once knocked off my feet by a thigh-high rush of water where once there was just gentle water sucking at my feet as I walked along the coastline. This girl is probably a little too far out for her own good!

Of course, there are lots of seagulls...

...and some interesting oddities. I love unique sand structures. I wonder what creature made this pit...

...or sent up these bubbles?

I love, too, how the water, receding from rocks, makes long trails on the sand.

I found sand dollars and other interesting shells in abundance.

Jellyfish of all shapes, colors, and sizes were washed up along the coastline.

Logs, too, were stacked here and there, deposited at will by the roaring surf.

I love the foam left behind on the rocks!

As we headed down the coast, a storm rolled in.

I *love* a stormy coastline. The colors are amazing, as the sky becomes the same color as the furthest wave.

Before the storm hit, there was just enough time to see the fading light among the trees at my favorite place along the coast, Hug Point. The light is wonderful, the trees are dense, and the coastline here is frequently stormy.

We sat alone on a small bench just beyond the sand and watched the storm roll in.

We left before it hit, because the temperature dropped drastically and we were wet, too. Another day!

One of the best parts about our beach day was finding our 2011 Christmas ornament. We started a tradition when we married of buying a special ornament each year, photographing it, and writing a little blurb about its discovery in a scrap book. We vetoed several ornaments this year, and then I found this smooth piece of wood on the beach. It already had a small hole bored in it...just perfect for a bit of yarn.

More Oregon photos to come! But speaking of yarn...now I can finally post some of my Christmas knitting projects that were hidden away. Here is a baby hat I knitted for a pregnant friend.

It matches this baby kimono, which buttons on the outside...

...but ties on the inside for a better fit. Those newborns are squirmy!

I also knitted a thick wool baby blanket. The yarn bulged like an egg crate before blocking, but with the application of water, and a little stretching...

...it straightened out into its normal state. Can you see the leaves?

Oh, and here is the baby! :)

I also made some Star Trek socks for Todd. It was my first time knitting a stranded design with two hands. It was slow, but my tension was better. I'm going to keep working on it.

I also made a hat and matching fingerless gloves for my brother-in-law.

For Christmas, I received a beautiful skein of fingering-weight yarn...that sparkles!

After all my Christmas knitting, I treated myself to two skeins of this lighter pink Malabrigo...

...two darker skeins...

...and a decadent skein of Madeline Tosh called "Magnolia Leaf".

I hope you treated yourself a bit, too!

Have a great week!