{"id":2755,"date":"2019-05-30T03:56:25","date_gmt":"2019-05-30T03:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/?p=2755"},"modified":"2019-06-06T21:48:13","modified_gmt":"2019-06-06T21:48:13","slug":"sisters-rocks-and-humbug-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/2019\/05\/30\/sisters-rocks-and-humbug-mountain\/","title":{"rendered":"Sisters Rocks and Humbug Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday, May 3, 2019<\/p>\n

My sister and I spent a long weekend at the Oregon Coast. We weren’t brave enough to camp in a tent (or maybe we’re just getting soft as we get older), so Thursday night we rolled into the KOA where we had booked a cabin. We still cooked outside on the Coleman stove, but we had a warm dry place to sleep:<\/p>\n

\"KOA<\/p>\n

\"KOA<\/p>\n

Our first stop this morning was Battle Rock Wayside Park<\/a> in Port Orford. In 1851 Captain William Tichenor dropped off nine men on the beach here. The local Qua-to-mah tribe wasn’t too happy about that, and according to the sign at the park for two weeks the men were “besieged on the island now called Battle Rock.” They were finally able to slip away in the night and escaped north to Umpqua City. Of course we know how this story ends: white men return in greater numbers and the native people are removed. You can read more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/p>\n

We also had a view of the harbor and the “dolly dock” there. The harbor is too shallow so hoists lift the boats in and out of the water every day:<\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/p>\n

It was a gorgeous day:<\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/p>\n

We could see Humbug Mountain in the distance. Those rocks in the ocean are part of the Redfish Rocks Marine Reserve.:<\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/p>\n

There is a nice viewing area here at Battle Rock:<\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/p>\n

And a visitor’s center (which wasn’t open):<\/p>\n

\"Battle<\/p>\n

Our next stop was Sisters Rocks State Park<\/a>, an obscure and unsigned park right by Highway 101 south of Humbug Mountain State Park. We parked at this blocked-off road, but we later realized that the gravel parking area just south of here would have worked too:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

We walked down the old road, which was in use when Frankport Beach (on the north side of this little peninsula area) was the site of a dock for loading tanoak bark onto ships:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

Sisters Rocks was also the site of a rock quarry in the 50s and 60s. Now the road is gated:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

View of Sisters Rocks:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

We could see into the cave below us. It used to be an enclosed cave, but the roof collapsed so now it is open to the sky:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

Looking north to Humbug Mountain:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

The old road took us down to the base of the rocks and we went over to look into the sea cave:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

We went around to the side of the rock to look into the cave entrance on the side:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

We walked north a little bit along the beach. The water was so blue! The sky was so blue! Here’s Humbug Mountain again:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

We followed raccoon tracks on the beach for a little ways:<\/p>\n

\"Raccoon<\/p>\n

Looking back at the rocks:<\/p>\n

\"Sisters<\/p>\n

We hiked back up the old road to the car and drove north to Humbug Mountain to hike up it. It’s a workout! We climbed up through the forest:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

When we reached the junction we went right on the West Trail:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

There is one spot with a view to the north. That’s Port Orford Heads State Park to the left, and the town of Port Orford to the right:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

And Highway 101 winding its way toward Port Orford:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

When we got to the top we discovered a recently opened-up view. As near as I can tell, crews cleared some trees up here just this spring, considerably opening up the views to the south. You can see what the summit “view” looked like in this hiker’s photo<\/a> from May 2016. Here is what it looked like during our visit:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

Also, the crews crafted some nice wooden benches from the trees they cut:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

Funny:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

We could see some prominent peaks in the mountains to the east. The prominent one on the left with a patch of snow on it is Saddle Mountain (no, not THAT Saddle Mountain<\/a>). The point sticking up to its right is Collier Butte. The forested hill in the foreground right of center is Colebrook Butte:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

The summit was protected from the relentless wind and the sunshine felt great. After sitting there and enjoying the view for awhile we hiked back down through the trees:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

We saw a few trillium:<\/p>\n

\"Humbug<\/p>\n

Back in Port Orford we followed signs to the Wetland Interpretive Walkway, which was a little boardwalk in a wetland right in town:<\/p>\n

\"Port<\/p>\n

\"Port<\/p>\n

To wrap up the day we stopped at Paradise Point, a beach access point just outside of Port Orford. These pretty pink flowers were blooming, although they are no doubt non-native:<\/p>\n

\"Paradise<\/p>\n

To the north we could see Cape Blanco, which we would be visiting tomorrow:<\/p>\n

\"Paradise<\/p>\n

To the south we could see Port Orford Heads:<\/p>\n

\"Paradise<\/p>\n

We walked on the beach for a short distance, but it was just too crazy windy to be out there long:<\/p>\n

\"Paradise<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday, May 3, 2019 My sister and I spent a long weekend at the Oregon Coast. We weren’t brave enough<\/p>\n

Continue readingSisters Rocks and Humbug Mountain<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[159,193],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2755"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2810,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755\/revisions\/2810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherylhill.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}