Trip to Beach

 My Lebanon friend who gets so carsick, said she was going to the coast yesterday, did I want to go too.

Of course I did.  She has to drive and drive her truck, because even when she drives she gets carsick.  She has to stop often.  Can't drive crooked roads either.

Consequently she doesn't go anywhere far really ever.  The coast road to Newport however has been straightened and its actually a fast drive now, from here to there, on very good road.  So now and then, she'll brave that route.

We left about noon and were back by 6:00 p.m.

We stopped by Olalla Reservoir.  My neighbors have gone there a couple times.   Its owned and kept up by Georgia Pacific.   Its a few miles off the highway, up a narrow two laner.   

It's beautiful forest surrounded but very small, about the size of Cheadle Lake, the old mill pond usually water weed and algae clogged, outside Lebanon.  Only this small reservoir is not water weed clogged.  There's a nice beach and picnic area, but its not big enough to be somewhere I'd drive almost an hour to kayak there unless with a picnic group.

We drove into Newport then and south across the Yaquina Bay bridge to Ona Beach.  At Ona Beach, you park, then walk a trail, maybe a quarter mile, cross Beaver Creek, to the ocean.   The beach is broad and flat.  Beaver Creek meanders into the ocean to the right.   

There was a lot of wind and the wind picked up sand and was scouring my face, hair, clothes, teeth. It was supposed to get up to 61 on the coast and maybe it did.  It was sunny but that wind!   I'd brought my kite and flew it for awhile.  I've had the kite for a decade at least.  

Then I just sat against a log on the sand and watched other people arrive and leave.  Very few other people braved the wind to be on the beach.  The sand was full of long dead jelly fish velella velalla, or wind sailors.  They'd been dead long enough to no longer stink at all and were dried up.

Ona Beach looking north

Ona Beach looking south

But one older man walked by us, said he was going to fly his kite.  He'd locked his electric bike up on the bridge.  He had a stunt kite, two hand controls, lots of strings.  He could bring that kite to inches off the sand, stand it on end there, swoop it back up.   It was fun to watch.   Electric bikes are becoming common to see.  They're great for hilly areas and for older folk or anyone really but they are also terribly expensive.

After we left Ona Beach we drove south a couple more miles to Seal Rock.  Much of the area was fenced now, to keep the destructive useless vandals from destroying more and from harrassing wildlife, but the viewpoints of the rocks, where sea birds nest and harbor seals haul out, were great.  I had my binoculars and could see seal covered rocks out beyond the closer chain of larger rocks.  When the wind was just right, I could hear them too.  

That flat rock farther out is where the seal action was going down.  It was covered in seals.

The little town area named Seal Rock is one of those artsy clever name places.

After we left Seal Rock, we drove back to Newport then on home.