Saturday, January 19 through Monday, January 21, 2019
Greg and I spent the holiday weekend in Yachats, a cute little town on the Oregon Coast that I have never visited as an adult. On Saturday we stopped at Cape Perpetua Scenic Area and were surprised to find the visitor’s center open. This is a national forest and with the government shutdown we didn’t expect any facilities to be open. Turns out volunteers were running things. Hooray for volunteers!
From the visitor’s center we did the short hike upstream along Cape Creek to see a giant Sitka Spruce.
This giant Sitka Spruce is 40 feet in circumference, 185 feet tall, and approximately 550 years old. Until a 1962 windstorm broke off the top, it was 225 feet tall.
After that we returned to the visitor’s center and hiked in the other direction toward the ocean, passing the foundation of a long-gone building from the days when a CCC camp stood here:
We stopped at the viewpoint for the spouting horn, but since it wasn’t high tide we didn’t see any spouting going on:
View of highway bridge over Cook’s Chasm:
We followed the path north:
There was a lot of sea foam:
We continued north to Cape Creek Cove, which we could see from above before descending steps down to it:
This is a nice protected cove where Cape Creek flows into the ocean. I’m sure this little beach is a zoo during nice weather. Today hardly anyone was there.
We headed to our Airbnb, a super cute cabin on the edge of Yachats. It was just perfect for a winter stay at the beach:
We ate dinner that night at the Drift Inn Cafe, which had some cool decor.
On Monday we went back to Cape Perpetua to see the spouting horn at high tide:
We also saw Thor’s Well:
Then we hiked the St. Perpetua Trail:
The trail heads up to a day use area and viewpoint that is reachable by car. We hiked the Whispering Pines trail over to West Shelter which was built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s:
The view was lovely:
Looking south:
Before heading home we also visited Yachats State Park:
So what did we do on Saturday? The weather wasn’t great so I spent a lot of time in this cozy reading nook reading a book:
We also attended the Yachats Agate Festival where I picked up this pretty agate pendant:
As part of the festival, the nearby Yachats Community Presbyterian Church was open to visitors. They have a panel of agate windows that are pretty cool:
Of course they had a piano and Greg asked if he could play it for a bit:
Great weekend at the coast! Yachats is pretty great.
