Today, our travels took us south along the beautiful Oregon coast. Our first stop was in Cannon, Oregon’s answer to Carmel, California. It is a pretty town, decked out with flowers
and song birds flitting about the local shrubbery.
However, Cannon’s primary attractions are its 4 miles of white sand beaches and Haystack Rock, a 235’ monolith.
Thousands of gulls, cormorants, puffins and meres make their homes on this protected habitat;
with a quarter moon in the background …Other smaller monoliths and rocks surround Haystack
Even at low tide, the waves put on a spectacular show as they crashed ashore.
These provide a home for brilliant orange and purple starfish,
seals (absent during the time we were there) and other marine plants and animals.
Continuing down the coast, we were treated to more sandy beaches,
rock formations protruding from the coastal waters,
During a lunch break, we sat watching fishing and other boats on quiet inlets
We also passed a number of other eclectic things:
All concrete bridge
Western terminus of US Route 20; which runs east 3,365 miles to Boston, and was the main road through Weston, MA, the Boston suburb where we lived when we met.
The first unicyclist we’ve seen on the trip
The “D” River, the world’s shortest at 120’, linking Devil’s Lake and the Pacific Ocean
The 195’ remnants of a smoke stack of former long demolished mill
Another old train … it seems, along with museums, every other town seems to have put their hands on some relic of the glory days of the steam locomotive or caboose.
and last, but not least, scores of Espresso kiosks which seem to dot every town, sometimes several,even in a small town … this one fairly bland in its architecture.
The only downsides of the day were a detour which took us nine tortuous miles over an extremely winding, narrow and rough road with no shoulders, only to discover we had to retrace our route to get back on the main road … and taking 35 minutes to drive a mere 5 miles through the center of Lincoln (a seashore community which is the epitome of a typical beach town, Aywhere USA).