We have reached the northern end of our Oregon coastal travels. From here we will head east and travel the Washington coastline on a future adventure.

Cannon Beach & Haystack Rock

Our first stop on the way to Fort Stevens State park was Cannon Beach, home of the world famous sea stack called Haystack Rock. Rising 235 feet out of the sand, it has been featured in many books and movies, including The Goonies, which was filmed here and in Astoria.

It was another cool and cloudy day, but we donned our rain jackets and sandals, and ventured out from a parking lot that could handle Usain (Tolovana Beach) and made the 1/2 mile walk down the beach. The tide was coming in, but we arrived in enough time to explore the tide pool around Haystack. Volunteers were on hand to answer questions and loan out binoculars so we could get a close up view of the many birds that nest on the sea stack. Puffins make their home here, but only a few could be seen from the air as their nests (burrows) are far up in the grass towards the rocks top and primarily on the water side. We had lots of fun exploring and wading in the cold water.

Lisa learned from a volunteer how to tell a murre from a puffin in flight. They both flap their wings so quickly it looks like flutter movements as they zip around, but common murres have white bellies that are clearly visible during flight. The all black ones are the puffins. Western Gulls were also nesting here.

The pictures don’t show it, but there were quite a few people out on this beach.

Tillamook Rock Light

Tillamook Rock Light, known locally as “Terrible Tilly”, is a deactivated lighthouse off the coast of Cannon Beach. I had to take the short video below to show what it looks like on a relatively calm day. I can’t imagine what it would look like during a storm.

As we were leaving the beach parking lot, we noticed the bunny pictured below munching on some grass amongst the wildflowers. Given that we haven’t seen any other rabbits with this coloring in the area, our only guess is that it might have once been someone’s pet.

Lewis and Clark National Historic Park

Our next stop was the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park. We watched a film within the welcome center narrated by an elder granddaughter of one of the original Clatsop tribe members whose grandmother was there when Lewis and Clark built their winter encampment here in 1805 and 1806 during their expedition. She recalled the stories her grandmother told her about when she (the grandmother) was a little girl of the white men who came on ships from the west (who knew how to trade) and the explorers who came from the east (who had to be taught how to trade).

After the film we explored the small museum and the recreation of Fort Clatsop outside the building. One of the volunteers provided a talk about Meriwether Lewis’ air rifle that he carried with him. It was a Girardoni one of the first of its kind to use compressed air instead of gunpowder. It took 1500 pumps to prepare it for firing, but then could shoot over 20 bullets up to 100 yards without reloading. While it was an impressive piece to show to the indigenous people along Lewis and Clark’s route, unfortunately, it was prone to leak air and the complexity of the rifle made it hard to maintain.

He also provided an evidence-based history lesson to show the new thinking (2007) that lead to the Girardoni rifle being confirmed as Lewis’ rifle. Prior to that is was thought to be a Lukens-made air rifle. Historians do use the scientific method.

Peter Iredale Shipwreck

We landed at Fort Stevens State Park, our campsite for a couple of nights, in late afternoon. Before calling it a day, we hiked to the beach to view the remains of the Peter Iredale that wrecked here in 1906. High seas and wind drove the ship ashore. Fortunately, all crew members were rescued via a lifeboat from Hammond, Oregon. Plans were made to tow the boat back out to sea, but weather conditions were not in their favor for several days and it became too embedded in the sand. The captain’s final toast to his ship was: “May God bless you, and may your bones bleach in the sands.”