Blue Goose ~ Day 32

July 2, 2014 ~ Seaside, OR to Newport, OR

While overcast early, it cleared by mid-morning. On the coastal highway, there was an accident which stopped southbound traffic for 20 minutes but I doubt it was serious. Still, there are always lots of police, ambulances, first responders.  The most damaged car looked like it had curtains blowing out the open windows.

In Tillamook, I drove around trying to find a place to get my hair cut but gave up that plan. I just wanted a quick chain hair cut place fluke Great Clips and couldn't find one. I am seeing too many very obese young women. There were a pair spending the morning on a bench in the shade outside Safeway,  laughing and smoking, eating and drinking, with pale, thin loser-type guys in attendance. These women weren't just overweight; they were young and really huge.

So, I headed to Cape Meares NWR. The main coastal route is the famous US 101, but there are often alternate scenic loops when 101 veers away from the coast, and one of these is the Three Arches Scenic Loop.  I headed for that and kept stopping in awe at view points to photograph the spectacular headlands.

Cape Foulweather - OR

I met a couple with birding scopes, looking for a Black Oystercatcher and they also were on their way to Cape Meares SP which is surrounded by Cape Meares NWR. The actual refuge boundaries are a bit vague, complicated by the fact that a landslide forced a road closure. The gentleman told me it had been closed a year. He then told me he had gone to Saugatuck for "55 years" in the summers. His mother, he said, had been a nanny to a professor from the University of Illinois who used to come to Saugatuck to study dune movement and who then ended up buying some land just north of town and building a primitive cabin there. His mother "helped build the cabin...." The birder woman with him was brisk and knowledgeable and determined to find the oystercatcher's nest.

I went on to the SP, where I forest hiked a small beautiful trail to the largest spruce tree in Oregon (unbelievably massive in girth and height) and then went to the cape/lighthouse itself.

WWW.CAPEMEARESLIGHTHOUSE.ORG

Captain John Meares was the first to sail into Tillamook Bay, naming it Quick Sand Bay because of the mud at low tide. Captain Robert Gray was the first American on the scene and he called it Murderers Harbor because one of his crew was killed by natives there. 
The lighthouse was built in 1889 and commissioned on January 1, 1890. The tower stands 38 feet high and is the shortest lighthouse in Oregon. It is constructed of bricks (made right on site at a cost of $2,900) with iron plates covering it...The lens is a first order Fresnel (pronounced "Fraynel") lens made in Paris, France. It was shipped around Cape Horn, up the west coast to Cape Meares and then hauled 217 feet up the cliff by a wooden crane that was built from local timbers native to the area...It produced about 30 seconds of fixed white light from the primary lens followed by a red flash of 5 seconds from the bull's-eye lens once every minute. This was the signature of Cape Meares Lighthouse. The primary lens produced 18,000 candlepower and the bull's-eye lens produced 160,000 candlepower. The light could be seen 21 nautical miles at sea. 
The oil lamp was replaced in 1910 with an oil vapor light similar to the Coleman lanterns of today. This was replaced in 1934 with electricity produced by generators and eventually by central power. The light today is automated and produces 57,000 candle power.

I saw the woman birder again and she pointed out a Peregrine Falcon nest on a cliff. There were month-old fluffy-white chicks. She had ound the Black Oystercatcher pair and excitedly talked on a walkie-talkie to her companion who was at another viewing spot, saying, "Johnny, come and take a picture through the scope..." There were also cormorants and Western Gulls nesting and on a nearby large rock, hundreds or even thousands of Common Murres.

The top of this rock is covered with nesting Common Murres at Cape Meares NWR/ SP

I watched for an hour...easy to do in this exquisite venue.

Other tourists walked by. We all took photos; it's an irresistible impulse. One gentleman had his iPhone and showed me pictures he had taken of peregrines in flight that were amazing!  The oystercatcher lady got "cold and hungry" and left, but I ran into her again down the road. She and Johnny were off to an eagle's nest and asked if I wanted to follow. I didn't but it was a compliment that she invited me.

Back at Cape Meares, as I was walking uphill to my car, I stopped in the shade and saw another life bird: a Hermit Warbler, just like that. So damn cool, especially as this is a colorful and distinctively marked bird.

It was late afternoon when I chanced upon Mo's West right next to The Devils Punch Bowl and stopped by for seafood sliders, clam chowder and a glass of wine. The deal was that this is off the main route and not crowded, the Flying Dutchman Winery next door (although closed) and the restaurant pretty much on the cliff. It was a small place with eight family style tables. I sat by a window that I could open or close to my comfort level. The sun was shining, the ocean so close...one of those times when everything is perfect. (Mo's is legendary on the Oregon coast for seafood, especially clam chowder...but their places are usually much larger and busier.)

Oregon Coast near Newport

Newport was only a few miles south and there was a Walmart there with several other obvious fellow travelers. I am learning to pick them out, along the periphery of the parking lots, near the trees. I spent an hour and finally getting my trip bird list in order and then read and fell asleep, sticky and dirty and badly in need of a shower, which should happen tomorrow night as I will be with the SODAs!