Pandemic Travel: Exploring the Oregon Coast

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Hello Hiveians!

It's been a while since my last post, but with the cold weather striking again here, I found the time to post about one of my semi recent adventures.

In late 2020, the pandemic was really getting to me and my lack of travel, so I decided to go visit a friend out West and have a little adventure. The original plan was to go visit Crater Lake in Oregon, so.I bought my flight to Portland and started planning the road trip.

But of course, it was 2020, and nothing should go right, right? Of course not. Enormous and devastating wild fires began sweeping across the West coast. I was watching daily as my trip looked more and more unlikely as they shut down Crater Lake because of the fires. Back to the drawing board. The Oregon Coast looked decent, as well as Olympia National park in Washington.

I would be watching the weather daily for signs to go through or to cancel my flight. Literally the night before, a forecaster said hope was in sight and that ocean air should be coming in to clear up the air quality of the coast.

The trip was a go.

I flew to Colorado and then switch planes to get to Portland. You could see the haze from the smoke in the air, the sky look ominous pretty much the whole flight.

When i arrived at Portland, I could smell the burnt smell in the air from the smoke. It was a new experience for me.

After a good nights sleep, we headed out bright and early heading down the Oregon coast. The sky was still pretty hazy when we left so we were a bit unsure if this would all pan out or not, but as soon as we started heading for the coast, the air got clear and things were looking good.

We saw a cool little rec area to stop at a take a break to explore and photograph.

And of course, a selfie.

After that, it was back on the road, South. The drive itself was an immense experience, view after view, it was incredible. We made a few stops at scenic spots such as this lighthouse viewing point.

After that, we got to check out some of the awesome Sand Dunes on the coast!

From there, we headed further south towards our destination, making one more stop along the way. This time to check out some amazing enormous rock formations and dark sand beaches.

After that, we made our way to setup our camp site and call it a night and get ready for tomorrow.

The next day our first stop would be to the Red Woods. This was kind of a spontaneous pick, though I looked into it a bit before hand as an option, but a woman we spoke to on the way said we have to go, so we did. And were we glad that we did. 

You've probably seen the photos, but it still takes you by surprise to truly see how giant these trees are. Just incredible!

Some of these trees are THOUSANDS of years old. Think about that. Think about all the things that have happened throughout the world while these trees have existed and grown. It's mind boggling. 

We explored different parts of the Red Woods, and then headed back North to Oregon to find a Secret Beach, which is literally called Secret Beach. We found it, and it was well worth tracking down and trekking down.

After spending some time exploring here, we headed to our sunset location, Whales Head Beach.

After sunset, we headed back to our camp site and waited for it to get dark, so that we could get some star photos!

After gazing at the cosmos, and wondering what all these little jumping bugs were on the beach, we decided to call it a night and maybe make a little pit stop on the way back in the morning.

After packing up our gear, off to Secret Beach we went for morning light!

After that, we headed straight back to Portland with a lot of miles ahead of us. The next morning I was up before sunrise and headed to the airport to catch my flight back home. It was a pretty short trip, but it was just what I needed to break the repetition of life in a pandemic.

How has the pandemic been for you? How has it effected your life, health, finance, etc? How do you feel your government responded to the pandemic? What could have they done better? I'd love to hear your experiences and insight of this terrible time, especially since I can't travel to ask people.

I know it's been tough, but the end is in sight, hopefully just a bit longer and we can start to reclaim our lives and our normalcy. I'll leave you with some shots from the plane ride home.

Till next time,

Sean

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