Cape Meares
Today started out overcast, but by mid-afternoon we had blue skies and scattered clouds. It was the first promising day for photography that we've had in quite awhile. I re-checked my photo apps and discovered we could shoot golden light at the overlook at Cape Meares State Beach and then drive down to Oceanside Beach State Park to shoot the sunset between the sea stacks.
The drive to Cape Meares was very scenic as it paralleled a group of lakes before it climbed to the hills that include Cape Meares. The original road from Highway 101 has been closed for a few years now, so we had to go all the way around the point that includes Cape Meares and then approach the park from the south. It's much slower and the road isn't maintained nearly as well as when the state maintained it as a through highway to Oceanside.
Because it was so late in the afternoon, there were very
few people at Cape Meares, and we had our choice of parking places. That has been very rare in the past. We photographed from the viewpoint
down to Three Arch Rocks before checking out the cliffs on the other side of the point where the birds nest. There were a few gulls and cormorants
flying around, but it was pretty quiet. Then, we started walking down toward the lighthouse and stopped for another angle of the cliffs.
A family asked us if we'd seen the whales. It took a few minutes, but we eventually saw at least two whales hanging out just off the rocks below
the cliff. We continued down the trail to the shortest lighthouse on the Oregon Coast. We finished the loop trail back to the Explorer shooting
the Three Arch Rocks with every type of framing we could find.
We drove the three miles from the point down to Oceanside Beach, which views Three Arch Rocks from the south. Our goal was to shoot the
sun setting between two of the sea stacks. I used PlanIt to confirm the sun would set between the rocks from the beach if we found just the right spot.
We walked down to the beach and scoped out the area, but it was still two hours before sunset. We decided to eat dinner at Roseanna's Cafe, which
was just above the beach. I think we went in planning a quick burger or sandwich, but we ended up with a delicious salmon or halibut dinner. It was the high point of the day.
The rest of the day went downhill from there. The evening turned toward the comical. We hiked down the beach and set up where we thought the sun would set between the rocks. Twenty-five moves later and a mile down the beach, the sun was finally dropping between the rocks. And then it was gone...hidden by a layer of clouds. It was still a beautiful evening, but it was not a good photographic evening.
The bad thing about the sunset being at 9:00 is that we didn't get back to camp until midnight. And then we had to download and organize the day's images. And worst of all...we didn't get anything beyond snapshots again today.
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