We had passed the wood carver shops at Seal Rock several times during our stay in Waldport, but they had always been closed. Today, we decided to start the day by checking them out.
The two wood carvers were very different. The first wood carver starts with a chainsaw, but then does amazing finish work to make these works of art. I have no idea how someone can look at a slab of wood and then decide how to carve out a pair of dolphins or a sea otter. All of his major pieces are one-of-a-kind sculptures. Amazing!
The second wood carver also works with a chain saw, but he mass produces pieces. His specialty is bears. He is also very good at what he does, but it's different. If we could have thought of a spot in our yard, we would have added a small bear cub to our collection.
After visiting the wood carvers, we returned to camp, packed up, and drove to Sunset Bay State Park
near Coos Bay.
It is a beautiful campground up a small canyon that drains into Sunset Bay.
The
campsites are all shaded by huge trees, and everything in the area is green. The one catch is that there is no cell phone coverage
in the campground. And no cell phone coverage also means no MiFi coverage. We will definitely have to leave on Sunday so I can work on Monday.
After we got set up and oriented, we tried to find the view of the Arago Lighthouse we read about in the guide book.
The problem was that it didn't say if the viewpoint was north or south of the campground entrance. We decided to try north first.
We found a parking spot
along the road with a trail leading toward the beach. The trail wound through the ferns and pines of the forest until we reached a point
overlooking two small bays. On our right was Smelt Bay, and on our left was another small bay and a view of the Cape Arago Lighthouse.
As we were shooting, Dan and Sharon walked up from the beach below. They own the house right behind the point. They were very friendly and told us how to get a good morning shot of the lighthouse from down the beach. I can't imagine living there and being able to walk out to the back yard to photograph this area any time you want. They are very fortunate people.
This wasn't the view mentioned in the guide book, so we tried south of the campground. A half mile up the road, we found it. The lighting was all wrong, but we'll try it as a morning shot tomorrow.
We continued up the Cape Arago Road to
Simpsons Reef.
As soon as we got out of the car, we knew what the attraction was: sea lions. About 100 yards offshore is Shell Island
with a tiny beach. That beach belongs to the sea lions. According to the signs, California sea lions, harbor seals,
elephant seals, and stellar sea lions live on rock outcrops just off shore. Without a long lens, they looked like brown sausages lying on the beach.
We stayed at Simpsons Reef for sunset, but the recurring pattern held. As the sun sets, it looks like we could get a great sunset. But just as it nears the horizon, a fog bank swallows up the sun and everything goes gray. Tonight there were some high clouds to make the sunset more interesting, but the final results were similar to all the other nights.
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