Oregon coast - Ophir Beach to Cape Blanco

Battle Rock wayside, Port Orford, OR

July 8, 2015. We started with a morning walk in Gold Beach then packed up and continued our road trip up U.S. Highway 101.

Ophir Beach

We made a number of small stops, including Ophir Beach, which is just about seven miles to the north. It is a quiet and peaceful little beach right off the highway and just the right kind of spot for resting the soul and body in between stretches of driving. While sitting on the beach, we were visited by what I'm guessing was a juvenile ring-billed gull. There are other similar looking gulls in the area, such as California gull, western gull, mew gull, and Thayer's gull; and in late summer, Heerman's gull. Even the best birders need a good field guide on hand and a lot of patience and experience to truly distinguish between these gulls, particularly at the juvenile stage. When we weren't visiting with the gulls, we were marveling over driftwood art. I see the fellow below as a young dragon.

A driftwood dragon--more of nature's art

Best guess: Juvenile ring-billed gull

Hazy morning view from Ophir Beach

Later that morning, we visited Humbug Mountain State Park, about 28 miles north of Gold Beach and just south of Port Orford. Humbug Mountain is a large forested hill that towers between the highway and the coastline. We visited the inland side along the highway, but didn't spend much time there. We totally skipped the Prehistoric Gardens after getting snapshots of the dinosaur statues, because we tend to avoid expensive tourist traps. Sometimes that's a mistake, because ancient nature and history could be in the hands of a private enterprise and worth the cost.

Battle Rock Wayside

Beach at Battle Rock Wayside

A lot of time was spent at the Battle Rock Wayside in Port Orford. It started with a little history--a piece of the wreck of a steam schooner called Cotteneva that hit Battle Rock in a wind storm in 1937. Then we read about the battle that took place at Battle Rock between the Quatomah band of the Tututni tribe of Native Americans and nine European settlers led by Captain William Tichener in 1852. More battles and alleged massacres ensued until treaties were established with the natives to allow the settlement of Port Orford in 1856. From the wayside parking lot, we took a trail through a beautifully vegetated park down to the beach that hosted the ominous presence of Battle Rock itself.

Battle Rock

But this was not a day of bloodshed from cannons and arrows. Battle Rock hosts some of the best tide pools in the area, and a good hour of tide pooling was in order. Climbing down and around the rock  formations at low tide unveiled a spectacular variety of marine life, such as beautiful aggregating and giant green anemones, ribbed limpets, acorn barnacles, gooseneck barnacles, turban snails, and all kinds of other interesting little critters not easily identifiable by a novice tide pooler like me.

Nice gatherings of aggregating anemones

Lovely gooseneck barnacles

Let's all squeeze in and share that wall, my fellow anemones

Ribbed limpets parked near a cluster of acorn barnacles and a host of other small rock dwellers

Cape Blanco State Park

We continued our journey northward, and our next big diversion was at the Sixes River.  Mom's a lighthouse nut; and though we had seen the lighthouse on previous lighthousing trips, there was more to see and do at Cape Blanco. As we traveled west on Cape Blanco Road along the Sixes River, the historic Hughes house caught our eye. We dropped in for a visit; and after our self-guided tour of the preserved mansion, we were treated to an enactment of a day in the family life of Patrick and Jane Hughes. The Hughes were Irish settlers who came to Oregon looking for gold. In 1860, they settled on the Sixes and built up a dairy dynasty from nearly nothing. The enactment was Jane talking with an Irish relative who was visiting from Dublin. We got the feel of the hardships the family faced before building their modest dairy farm into a very successful enterprise. The home was built around 1898, and Jane lived in it until 1923. It was a cool idea for volunteer staff to entertain us with their little skit and teach us some history at the same time.

There was more history to enjoy at our visit to the Cape Blanco lighthouse. 

We were treated to a tour from more volunteers from the Cape Blanco Heritage Society, including a detailed discussion of the 1870 lighthouse history and a climb up the very steep spiral stairs. The stairs are not for the faint of heart, but the views from the top of the lighthouse are spectacular, and standing next to the enormous Fresnel lens is an experience of itself--well worth a little vertigo. After the tour, we went to the gift shop and bought a couple of warm hoody sweatshirts, and then went on our way. We generally shop at the lighthouse gift shops, knowing the money goes to the continued care and preservation of these historic treasures, funded mostly by donations and people like us buying gifts and hoodies. 

View from top of Cape Blanco lighthouse

It was getting towards evening, and we were fortunate to secure a campsite at the Cape Blanco State Park campground without a reservation. We had a little time before making dinner and settling in to take a brief hike from the lighthouse road down the cape. I started by photographing a few succulents I couldn't identify and then the views from the trail, which were amazing. 

Gorgeous view from Cape Blanco trail; but don't get too close to the edge

The trail looped us back to our campsite. Camping in these woods was quite a good ending for a rather fantastic day on the Oregon coast.