Pictures of the Oregon Coast

After staying for a few days near Pacific City, Oregon, we traveled down the coast to Florence, about 90 miles south.  We stayed within walking distance of the dunes, and also close to the coast so I could get some good pictures.

Dune Buggy Ride, Sandland Adventures, Florence, Oregon

Miles and miles of windblown sand encompass the Oregon Dunes, which stretch for fifty-four miles, from Heceta Head north of Florence to Cape Arago just south of Coos Bay. Well over 100,000 years old, this dune complex of roughly 40,000 acres covers the largest area of any dune system on the West Coast of North America. Its eastern boundary is more than three miles from the shore for much of its length.

Dune buggy riders take advantage of these huge dunes and ride for hours every day.  We can hear them from our campsite at South Jetty Thousand Trails Campground. We decided to partake in this adventure through a company called Sandland Adventures, which offers dune buggy rides to visitors. It was a blast.

Our seats for the ride

Cape Perpetua, Thor's Well, Brays Point, Oregon Coast

Cape Perpetua is another national recreation area in the Siuslaw National Forest system. There are awe-inspiring views, tide pools and old-growth forest. It also has 26 miles of trails, none of which we walked. At 802 feet, it is a spectacular view down the coast. The CCC served as a lookout for enemy ships and planes during WWII. We drove up to Cape Perpetua to see Thor's Well, (also known as 'Spouting Horn'), which is a fountain/sinkhole, which is driven by the immense currents of the Pacific Ocean.  I actually walked down onto the rocks to Thor's Well (with the dogs) to get these pictures.

Munson Creek Falls & Cape Meares, Oregon

Traveling north on Hwy 101 from Pacific City, we stopped at Munson Creek Falls, which is the highest waterfall on the coast at 319 feet. There is a small creek that flows next to the path where there are spawning salmon during the fall and winter.

Cape Kiwanda, Pacific City, Oregon

Cape Kiwanda is a National Recreation Area packed with cars on the beach, people and dogs. People are swimming, surfing, and climbing the sand dunes to slide down or surf down on boards. It was quite a place. There is also a huge rock about a mile out from shore they call a Haystack Rock. This is one of three Haystack Rocks on the Oregon coast. The two most famous are this one at Cape Kiwanda and the other is at Cannon Beach, pretty far north on the coast and a place we are not going to (so I found some pictures online to post here).

Cape Kiwanda, Haystack Rock

Mount St. Helens, Washington

At one time Mount St. Helens was just another mountain/volcano in the Olympic National Forest. But on May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted, fracturing the volcano's entire north slope, cutting the summit height by more than 1,300 feet. This caused the largest ever recorded landslide. The resulting ash cloud billowed 15 miles into the air, depositing debris throughout the state.

Olympic National Park, Hurricane Ridge, Washington

The Olympic Peninsula is composed of about one million acres, 95% is Olympic National Park, five acres in Olympic National Forest, and over 600 islands in national wildlife refuges. From where we were camped, the closest place we went to was Hurricane Ridge. We will have to hit the west coast of Washington on another trip to see the Hoh Rainforest, Kalaloch, the Quinault Rain Forest, to name a few, which are a part of the Coast and Forest sections of the park.