July 9

2011 Oregon Trip

Saturday, July 9

We returned to Silver Point this morning to get morning light on Haystack Rock and the Needles. It wasn't early enough to get the good warm light, but it did make a difference in lighting the pine trees in the foreground. This shot is all about the trees framing the scene. The irony is that the best place to photograph the shot is from the top of a highway barrier at the edge of the parking lot. The extra height helps to put some space above Haystack Rock and the coast in the background.

From Silver Point, it was off to Seaside. It's only about 6 miles north of Cannon Beach, but it feels completely different from Cannon Beach because it's been allowed to grow. Cannon Beach seems adamant about retaining it's small town charm and not allowing any chains to get a foothold in the community. We hit the outlet stores in Seaside, but limited our shopping to the Black & Decker store. We also hit the market and a hardware store to complete our errands before driving downtown on Broadway to the famous Promenade and Turnaround. That's fancy for the main street that goes through the touristy part of town toward the beach where a "turnaround" circles a statue of Lewis and Clark and returns you east.

We walked along Broadway and then had lunch at Norma's. We had heard it advertised on the radio station we've been listening to up here. It was as good as advertised.

We've been listening to Boss FM for the last week or so. It plays the best music of any station I've found. It plays nothing but the absolute "classic" rock songs of the 60's and 70's, with a fewer number of songs from the 80's. Every song is a favorite. The weird part is that they play 30 minutes of non-stop music followed by about 4 minutes of local commercials. Then, it's 30 more minutes of music. There are no disc jockeys, no news, and no weather.

We had dinner in the motorhome and then drove to Tolovana Beach Wayside Park to shoot sunset. It didn't look very promising with a cloud bank offshore, but we decided to shoot what we could. Then, the clouds separated from the horizon, and we could see there would be a sunset. I took off for Haystack Rock to try to catch it in the setting sun. We were probably about a mile down the beach, so it was a ways to go. I kept stopping and snapping pictures as I walked down the beach, but the best shots were at Haystack Rock. The color in the sunset wasn't great, but the lighting was still pretty dramatic. Even if the shots don't turn out, filming the sunset with the sounds of the waves breaking and the birds overhead was enough.