RETIREMENT TRIP #7

Oregon's Banana Coast

                                                                          “This is the Oregon Banana Coast,” announced Andy this morning as we packed.  “We’ll probably see some banana palms.  I guess the weather is mild enough for them to survive.”

Our little Ford Fiesta has Utah license plates.  Several times people have asked if we are from Utah.  Their eyes widen in surprise when we answer, “No, Connecticut.”  Then it usually takes a bit of explanation.

I felt sorry for the people in the adjoining room at our motel last night.  A robo-call at 5:24 a.m. set my phone blaring.  Andy and I both jolted awake and never really went back to sleep, but at least when we did get up an hour later, the sun was out.  Mist hung heavy in the low spots by the time we packed up and hit the road. 

At an inlet in Gardiner, Oregon, birds wade
in search of food in the early morning.

Gardiner is a dying town.  It’s a shame because it sits on a beautiful inlet where seagulls and egrets waded in the shallows.  The morning fog hovered over trees to the west, creating a cloud bank that accented the tree line.

We stopped for pictures at a peaceful pullout along the roadside.  But in other parts of town, the factories had closed and a huge For Sale sign was posted outside of what looked like an old lumber mill.

Bolon Island Day Use Area was just a half-mile woodsy trail along an inlet.  At the point, workmen were banging and pounding away on a new dock, probably to load lumber and float it via barge to a mill.  We had passed several logging trucks and patches of clear cut on our way down Route #101 earlier this morning.  But the most interesting aspect of Bolon Island Trail was the smell… stench actually.  An informative sign explained that since 1988 the area was a nesting habitat for the Double Crested Cormorant.  Huge dead pine trees housed their stick and seaweed nests, and the undergrowth below was splattered white, in some place almost solidly covered.   It was guano—28 years and thousands of birds worth of it!   And it smelled!   Many of the trees were dead.  They had been over-fertilized.

Weather is  major factor in seabird success.  In productive breeding seasons, ocean winds cause an upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water, which results in a plankton bloom.   Plankton are the base of the food chain upon which larger fish and ultimately seabirds depend.  In El Niño years, the ocean warms, which alters ocean currents and prevents upwelling.  This results in a crash in prey populations, causing large-scale breeding failure and adult mortality in seabirds.



At Umpqua Lighthouse, Andy poses next
to a rib bone of a Humpback Whale.

Unlike El Niño, which is a short-term natural phenomena that disrupts marine food webs periodically, global climate change represents a more pervasive and permanent change in the ecosystem, the consequences of which are unknown. In fact, climate change is often perceived to be a future threat, but the reality for marine wildlife is that it is happening now and scientists are  struggling to unravel the interrelationships within marine ecosystems to predict how those systems will respond. The Oregon Coast is a prime study area.



Drivers of ATV's and OHV's practice
their maneuvering skills
at the Oregon Dunes.

Oregon Dunes is a staging area for ATV’s and OHV’s.  There were eight or ten drivers out practicing on the sandy slopes.

Oregon Dunes offers recreational opportunities,
as well as scenic beauty.

Umpqua Lighthouse, a U.S. Coast
Guard facility, warns ships of dangers
along the Oregon Coast.
 

Umpqua Lighthouse, a Coast Guard Station, is not accessible to the public, and there are only occasional, specially scheduled tours, but it made a lovely picture, particularly after the sun came out.

Although tours are not readily available,
the Umpqua Lighthouse is scenically
beautiful up close and from a distance.

“Oregon certainly has some gorgeous parks,” said Andy, as he turned into the William M. Tugman State Park.  One road took us to a pine-forested campground and another out to Eel Lake.  A man in a wet suit and diving cap stood at the doc k and dove in for a lake swim, just before I snapped a picture.

From across the sand dunes, the
lighthouse stands out from the tree line.

Dunes followed Route #101 as we drove south toward Coos Bay.  “Those are the longest dunes in North America,” said Andy.

Even though everything else cleared, Sunset Bay was socked in with fog and mist.  We sat by the water a while, hoping for a picture, then drove south for better viewing with the intent to return.  Cape Arago brightened.  We sat and waited.   Sea lions set up a racket on one of the nearby island.  We walked a couple short trails in the fog, following their barks and roars, but even from the point we couldn’t see anything.

At the Port of Coos Bay, cranes load logs onto a freighter.

Back at Cape Arago the fog seemed thicker.  It deepened even more so back in town.  “It’s as if winter is testing the waters,” said Andy.  “Maybe this is the rain that was predicted for up north for Saturday and Sunday.”

We checked out the Oregon Dunes again for clearing and then tried to check in the motel.

At the port in downtown Coos Bay, workers loaded huge logs onto a freighter.  Several cranes worked at once.

“Those could be telephone poles,” said Andy.

“So then they are headed to South Korea to be soaked in creosote?” I asked.

Thousands of logs in Coos Bay port
await shipping to some distant place.

“Could be,” he agreed.  “But it was 16 years ago that it was cheaper to ship them out and back than to creosote them here… and less hazardous, as well.”
Something is definitely wrong with that economic system!



From the viewpoint at Simpson Reef,
we see islands
that house sea lions at low tide.

At 3:30 p.m. we tried once more to find the sun along the coast.  Coos Bay, for the most part, was bright and blue.  Not so along the water.  Even though the tide was going out, it didn’t drag the fog and clouds out with it.

Jostling for space on the tiny island, the sea lions bark and roar.

At a pullout on Simpson Reef, the fog cleared enough to expose the island offshore.  That was where all the roaring of Stellar Sea Lions and barking of California Sea Lions came from.
The islands were nearly a solid mass of sea lion, the last spot on the Oregon Coast they can haul themselves out on land.


At the end of one island a few younger
animals claim territory at low tide.

South of here, the Oregon coastline rises from the water in steep cliffs.

We descended to the beach at Cape Arago South, a protected area that posted “no collecting of any kind.”  The peace descended with our steps.

Except for tons of driftwood and bunches of seaweed,
the beach at Cape Arago South is deserted
in the late afternoon at low tide.

Alone on the beach with driftwood and seaweed, we didn’t even hear sea lions only a point away.  The climb back up was a bit noisier with puffing and panting!



Low tide allows us to walk along the
wet rocks on the exposed seal beach.



As death takes one seal,
life goes on for thousands more nearby.

From the adjoining viewpoint we descended again, closer to sea lions this time, but on the back side of the little chain of islands they called home.

There in the shallows on rocks totally exposed by low tide, not five feet from our path, were two dead sea lions.  It was a stark reminder of the ways of nature.

The slug moves slowly across
the path as we ascend the cliff.

 

On the way back up, a giant slug about three inches long slid across the path.  I didn't touch him.  Life--even slug life--is precious.

By the time we drove back motel-bound, the fog had returned and we called it a day … a day along the Banana Coast, that is!