Cape Blanco Tide Pools

One of the many attractions on the north crescent beach of Cape Blanco is the tide pools, which are exposed at mid-to-low tides. A few weeks ago a sunny day and a low tide allowed us to examine up close some of the more amazing flora and fauna found between the tides. With my new, [...]

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On Coast Guard Hill

This has been a long few weeks of recovery from hip replacement surgery and cabin fever is setting in. So a few days ago we threw caution to the wind and took a picnic to the Coast Guard Station atop Coast Guard Hill. Normally we head directly out to the headlands trails for the views [...]

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Nothing But Blue Sky

While the rest of the country has been snowbound, icebound, and in some cases freezing in the dark (paging West Texas!), we here in Port Orford have basked in near nonstop sun these last two weeks. With it the mood has markedly improved. Folks who are normally viewed ducking, heads tucked, hoods up, into the [...]

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What I Really Know About Windy Days

Thursday morning at Battle Rock City Park—overlooking the Pacific, the harbor jetty and the crescent beach—Clara’s ears served as our own personal weather vane. As she faced into the south wind, not only were her ears flattened to her head and pointing due north, her fur was too. The forecast for Port Orford was for [...]

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To the Lighthouse

In our five weeks here, we’ve already managed to visit Oregon’s westernmost point, Cape Blanco, a 200 foot high promontory just north of town, five times. Heading west off 101, we pass cranberry bogs and sheep ranches, through tunnels of Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce, to Cape Blanco State Park. As the road climbs, we [...]

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Welcome to Port Orford

We’ve greeted autumn in our new homeplace—Port Orford, Oregon. Although semi-native New Mexicans, we’ve spent the last five winters on the Curry County coast, always wondering if we could comfortably change from our high desert’s annual eight inches of rain, to the 80 inches the Oregon coast promised. A beautiful home in Port Orford, our [...]

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Second Home Return

Tonight, as we leave for Oregon, I am reminded of a poem I wrote three years ago when we arrived at our “second home”—SandCliff House in Nesika Beach. SandCliff Looking North ©SR Euston

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Rain Birds

This week we sent in the deposit check for our Oregon winter cottage. We’ll leave early in January and stay through February. We’ve discovered that this is our perfect time: There is virtually no one else on the muddy Coast Trail, the high surf warning beaches, or the snow-dusted spruce-lined coast range trails. Winter on [...]

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Cape Blanco—West of the West

We have spent the last four winters at the very edge of the West. We stay in a small green shingled cottage at the end of a dirt driveway, at the end of a promontory, at the end of the continent, in a tiny hamlet on southwestern Oregon’s coast in Curry County. One morning I [...]

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