My parents lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico for a while. When visiting at home they didn't care as much about any one thing except spending at least one afternoon on the beach. They used to say that there was something unsettling about living in the middle of the desert, and it wasn't the dry heat or the horizon noticeably absent of mountains. They missed the water.
Our family routine was to go, sit, watch the surf and eat, then walk it. I'm an adult now so I can be a tad more adventurous. There are plenty of things to do, and I like them all. Stuff to see and do:
At the beach in Lincoln City we always visit "Road's End." Cool grandma-voice narrates while I am nodding along:
I've lost many articles of clothing in the creeping tide here. I prefer to believe it's how Japan keeps up with PacNW trend.
Depending on which beach you visit, you can collect or see different things. In my years I've collected all kinds of seashells and sand dollars, clams, agates, and crab shells, and I've seen plenty of washed-up jellyfishes, kelp (30 ft. long), seaweed, starfishes, small whales, seals and other large fish. At one beach there's even a washed up pirate ship (or so my imagination informs me). I remember walking the beach alone with my dog at sunrise in Seaside discovering that there was a small number of people also out to probe the sand as I for what the ocean brought during the night. I watched the people with their buckets and nets "hunt" down the crab that had been trapped in the tidepools of sand.
Probably my favorite beach is Seal Rock, featured below, a 45 minute drive south of Road's End. There are secrets to this beach which I treasure. In the winter when the tide is high there is this long cavern of ocean that gets trapped between two low jagged peaks. Every thirty seconds as the tide rushes in, thunder rolls as the water crashes up toward you and along the walls, spraying everywhere and blowing out the ears. Cool. Those low-lying rocks, inland from where the seals bathe, were formed 35 million years ago. Just about the time primates descended from mammals. Awesome.
What else am I forgetting to mention about the beach? How about how it's only an hour's drive away from home? Who can resist.... Even when temperatures aren't nearly balmy yet, we all seem to think it's great.
Beach, Spring 2008
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