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DAY 19 – Thursday, April 1
START: Gold Beach, OR
END: Tillamook, OR
MILEAGE: 311 miles

HIGHLIGHTS: Light-bagging

We woke up this morning to the sound of a meteorite crashing through our hotel room window…  April fools?  No?  Nevermind.

We were actually up and out and on the road by eight o’clock today.  No, seriously, that one’s for real.  Oregon is chock full of lighthouses and we intended on seeing all of them today, so that meant an early start.  The sun was shining and the temperature was mild as we continued north along U.S. 101 toward Cape Blanco.  According to our lighthouse book, the Cape Blanco Light is situated atop a sheer two-hundred-foot white cliff overlooking (duh) the ocean.  The grounds were supposedly open to the public, but upon arrival we were greeted by a locked gate and a sign indicating that tours were only available April through October.  But… but… but… this is April, we asserted to nobody.  Thinking we had to be missing some important detail, we reread the sign and double-checked the date several times, but neither one ceased to contradict the other.  Locked out a good half-mile from the lighthouse, we settled for a few long-distance shots and were just about to move on when a pickup truck pulled up and an official-looking state employee got out to unlock the gate.  He told us that tours of the lighthouse would start at ten o’clock. 

Of course they would.  It would figure that the one day we were up and at the world early, the world wasn’t ready for us.  It was still before nine and we had far too much mileage to cover to warrant sitting around here for an hour.  The good news though was that all the other lighthouses that normally allowed visitors were open today as well.  Actually that was really good news.  If we’d gotten here just one day earlier, we’d have been locked out of more than just Cape Blanco.  April 1 is the apparently magic day for Oregon’s lighthouses, when they dust off the interiors and open the doors to all the enthusiasts who want nothing more than to clamber to the top and feel like a old time lighthouse keeper for a few minutes. 

I nudged Lauren and said, “See, aren’t you glad we stayed that extra day at Laura’s?” 

Just over a half-hour later we arrived at Bullard Beach State Park in the town of Bandon, home of the Coquille River Lighthouse – which was open and waiting for us when we pulled up.  The base of this octagonal lighthouse had been setup as both a museum and gift shop with a lone volunteer (a very nice older lady who seemed genuinely happy to see us) working both.  The volunteer pointed out a sealed-over section of wall where the old foghorn used to be and informed us that the real operational lighthouse and foghorn now sit at the end of a long jetty sticking out into the ocean.  While a light at the top of this tower still flashes its old signature flash, the ocean side is actually blacked out since this is no longer an official beacon. 

After poking around downstairs for a few minutes, we decided it was time to climb up to the head.  Admission was free but we made a donation to the local lighthouse fund anyway.  The lady volunteer thanked us for our contribution, then looking at Lauren’s protruding belly, now reaching ridiculous proportions, asked us if we were sure about making the climb.  We assured her that we would be fine and promised not to induce labor on the way.

“Well I guess if you did, it’d be a pretty neat place to give birth,” the lady said laughing. 

“Not at only thirty-three weeks, it wouldn’t,” said Lauren under her breath.

The Coquille River Light’s tower wasn’t very tall and the climb really wasn’t all that bad.  We were greeted at the top by Chuck, another volunteer who looked to be in his seventies, and who was incredibly well educated on the history of this particular lighthouse.  He told us that the Coquille Light was built in order to guide ships into the river, which runs several miles inland into the heart of what was once a major timber zone.  Any shipper who wanted a piece of that pie had to navigate the river first.  But before they did that, they had to get into the river.  The freshwater of the river mixing with the saltwater of the ocean creates a sizeable churning effect, which has resulted in a large sandbar at the mouth of the river.  While the water’s depth on the river side is anywhere from fifty to seventy feet, the depth on the ocean side is a mere ten to twenty feet.  Depending on tidal conditions, the sandbar can sit as little as three feet below the surface, posing a considerable problem to pretty much any craft larger than a canoe.

Skippers had to navigate the ocean’s surges just right in order to make it safely from the ocean into the river.  Time it wrong and the ship would come down smack on the sandbar, sometimes breaking the ship in half.  And there have been many who have timed it wrong.  In fact, we were told, the last three hundred feet of the river’s south jetty is actually the remains of a ship that crashed there.  It became too dangerous to try and free the ship, so the Coast Guard simply filled it with rocks and left it there.  Chuck also told us that the river’s churning effect creates an incredibly strong undertow, which means a ship often doesn’t just sink.  It can get pulled under and dragged out to sea at a frightening speed if the conditions are (right?).  He said that less than a year before, a tour boat had crashed on the sandbar and been sucked down.  The wreckage surfaced a couple days later nearly a mile out to sea.  There were no survivors. 

Looking around (morbidity and mortality pushed out of our minds), we could see that the beach was littered with scores and scores of driftwood, ranging in size from small sticks to full-blown tree trunks.  Chuck said this happens every winter.  The wood drifts in from god knows how far, some of it floating out there for years and years before finally coming to rest in the state park where every spring it gets cleared away with a backhoe.  Even the jetties were littered with their own share of wood, though we were told they were far too dangerous to clear off.  Ocean surges and undertow aside, Chuck also said, “You never know when a ‘sneaker wave’ is going to hit.”

Not only is this area in the same Alaskan tsunami danger zone as Crescent City , but up here the San Andreas is actually an off shore fault which tremors periodically, disrupting the millions of gallons of ocean water situated above it.  “Sneaker waves” can vary in size from a minor surge on up to a full-blown tidal wave. Living in the aftermath of the catastrophic tsunamis that devastated India in 2005, many of us now know to look for the telltale sign of water receding from the beach, indicating a wave of biblical proportions on its way.  But many sneaker waves don’t telegraph their arrival quite so blatantly.  A wave just big enough to wash ashore, say, fifty feet inland isn’t going to produce a noticeable change in the shoreline in the moments preceding its arrival.  According to Chuck, our ad hoc maritime authority, the only way to know if a sneaker wave is coming is if you happen to see a white breaker out near the horizon.  At that point you have maybe ten minutes before it reaches the mainland – and any wave tall enough to be breaking that far out from land is definitely not one you want to be around when it arrives. 

“Where would you even go at that point if you saw one?” Lauren asked.

“I’d stay right here,” Chuck responded confidently.  The lighthouse’s foundation was made of solid stone and had been standing for over a hundred years. 

“She’s solid,” said Chuck. 

That point was reaffirmed the year before when a busload of elementary students came for a tour of the lighthouse.  The group had just gotten situated in the tower’s head when a sneaker wave, ahem… snuck up on them.  It brought enough water with it to actually pick up the school bus and float it on top a log, requiring a tow truck to come free it.  But inside the lighthouse, the kids and everybody else were safe and sound. 

We spent nearly a half hour up in the head talking with Chuck – and probably could have stayed longer.  But we were still crunched for time, so we thanked him and headed back to the car.  On the way out we both agreed that our donation to the local lighthouse fund was well spent.  These folks sure knew how to make people enter their lighthouse feeling welcome and exit feeling educated. 

After this, Lauren and I had a run of “light bagging.”  Basically for a couple hours we simply drove to lighthouses, stopping for just long enough to take a picture (“bagging” it) before moving on.  According to our book, these next several lighthouses weren’t open to the public, so we didn’t make a huge effort to get close to them.  Our first “bag”, the Cape Arago Light, is situated on a small island just off the mainland and is inaccessible except by boat – and even then, only by the Coast Guard.  The light was first built in 1866 to guide lumber haulers into Coos Bay – and from the moment of its inception has never had an easy time doing its job.  The island is subject to harsh erosion and the first lighthouse quickly threatened to topple into the sea.  A second lighthouse was built in 1910, and after only a few decades it too was in danger.  So yet a third lighthouse was built in 1934.  This is the one that still stands today.  The first two never did end up falling into the ocean.  While that certainly would have been a dramatic sight to witness, the Coast Guard opted for an equally spectacular demonstration and blew them up with dynamite after completion of the third light. 

In addition to the difficulty of building a structure that would stand the test of time, the Lighthouse Service likewise had trouble devising a method of transportation to and from the island that could stand the test of weather.  Traverses involving low bridges, high bridges, cable trams and good old-fashioned boat travel often ended in near disaster as the ocean beat, crippled, and mocked any attempt to bring keepers and their families from the mainland to their posts. 

Of course all this history didn’t look nearly so exciting from over a mile away.  And certainly not after driving nearly sixteen miles off Route 101 down a bumpy dirt road to the scenic turnout.  By the time we got there, Lauren was feeling not only queasy but also false laborish.  So she sat in the car while I jumped out, snapped a couple of pictures, then brought us back to the highway. 

Another twenty miles up the road, we bagged the Umpqua River Light.  A sign on the side of the road said, “Lighthouse View 1/4 Mile.”  We pulled into the turnout, took pictures of what little we could see – basically the lighthouse’s red top poking through the trees – and were off again. 

Forty miles later we bagged the Heceta Head Light.  According to their website, Heceta Head is the most photographed lighthouse in the United States.  I don’t know if I would agree with that assessment.  Personally, I’d put my money on the Cape Hatteras Light in North Carolina for that honor.  Having seen the number of tourists that flock to see that trademark “barber pole” paint job, I’d be very surprised if any other lighthouse came close to the number of pictures being taken of Hatteras.  But still, you do have to admit, as far as scenery goes, Heceta Head has plenty to offer photographers.  Flanked by angular cliffs and ocean on one side and lush evergreens on the other, Heceta Head certainly has a good deal of romantic allure going for it and the grounds currently function as a bed and breakfast / wedding pavilion.  Surprisingly the prices were fairly reasonable, given the location, with some rooms going for as low as $133.00 per night.  But it was barely passed noon and we simply could not stop – not even for romance and lighthouses.  So onward and northward we drove.

The shortness of speech on the Oregon road signs didn’t make much sense until you looked around and saw something else you don’t generally see elsewhere in the country: drive-through espresso huts.  We were in the Pacific Northwest now, home of Seattle and her famous son, Starbucks.  The people up here love their coffee a lot, and their espresso even more.  And when you’re that jacked up on caffeine, you apparently don’t want to deal with the petty hassle of actually getting out of your car for your next fix.  Many of these espresso huts didn’t even have the option of indoor counter service.  They were simply little one-room structures with just enough space inside to fit a single espresso machine and a cash register.  They didn’t bother taking up valuable real estate with shelves and cupboards full of silly things like pastries or bagels.  The owners knew Oregonians were coming to their hut looking for one thing: espresso – and damnit they wanted it NOW! 

After seeing all these espresso huts, other things started to make sense.  For instance, the rapid speech patterns of the people in the restaurant the night before.  Of course!  They weren’t being rude.  They just couldn’t help themselves.  With that much espresso coursing through their veins, they didn’t physically have the ability to wait for us to finish a sentence.  And I suppose anybody that hopped up on the state’s unofficial drink (Milk is the official one, but really that’s just the vehicle for these people’s lattes isn’t it?), doesn’t have time to read five whole words on a road sign either. 

(((Just tell me exactly what I need to know and spare me all those annoying superfluous words that waste valuable nanoseconds of my time and keep me from getting my next gigantic cup of triple shot espresso and really serve no other purpose being on the sign in the first place except to satisfy some half educated government employee's anal retentive need to stay true to a ridiculous archaic standard of english which still refuses to include rapid run on sentences as good and useful turns of phrase and is the reason I got a C in public speaking to begin with and all just because my big jerk of a professor went to harvard school of dictation or whatever the crap it was and i'm sorry but have you tasted the sorry excuse for coffee they serve out there now what does that sign up there say ELK good great got it!!!!)))

I’ve never been a fan of espresso personally.  My experiences with the stuff generally centered around a tiny porcelain cup containing a single supercharged shot with a lemon wedge on the side that we served in the slightly snobby restaurant I worked at in Boston.  Those little shooters of dark brown water, served without milk or Sweet & Low were always so stale and bitter that I likened it to liquid cigarette butts.  As far as I was concerned, the only logical explanation for why somebody would want to drink something so horrible was for the caffeine high, which I imagine must have been pretty intense – you know, once the shakes wore off.  I wouldn’t know.  I’d never finished an entire cup.  So we bypassed all the little espresso huts and focused our attention on finding the next lighthouse.  Though we did stop and grab a cheap lunch at a little mom and pop convenience store that was advertising three hotdogs for $1.25. 

THERE'S MORE
DAY 19 - PAGE 2