Southern Oregon Coast

Another day, another boring old run along the beach with a stick! Here, we had stopped at the magnificent Cape Perpetua to view the tidepools at Neptune Beach:

A bit further south, north of Florence, was the magnificent Heceta Head Lighthouse. Even though it was pouring rain at the time, I wasn't about to pass it up! As a was photographing, I kept hearing barking sounds. It was the sounds of sea lions relaxing on the beach beneath the lookout point I was at. There are some caves along the coast here that they like to hang out in (there's even a tourist attraction that's built an elevator down into one of the cliffs so that you can observe the sea lions inside the cave).



My stop in Florence was just for lunch, but it was another place I would have loved to spend more time at. Just south of town were miles of sand dunes along the oceanfront-- hard to see in the pouring rain, but they were there!

My base camp for the southern coast was Bandon, and it was my favorite beach town in Oregon. The first evening sunset there continued to be a wash out, so I took some shots of the storm clouds over their lighthouse instead. The next night turned out to be better, with the sun finally coming out between the clouds before it set. Also interesting along the beach north of Bandon were some wild yellow lupines-- I'd seen purple lupines in the wild before, but not yellow ones!









South of Bandon, was the quiet little town of Port Orford with spectacular large surf hitting it's beach.

From Port Orford to the California border, the Oregon coastline becomes much larger and more wild. Going north to south seemed the perfect way to experience the Oregon coast, saving the best parts of it for last.