On the weekend of July 20th-22nd we participated in a wonderful art festival at Bush's Pasture Park in downtown Salem, Oregon. We had a great time and did very, very well with sales of our mixed metal jewelry. Afterwards we decided to slowly wander down the Oregon coast on our way home to California. We drove up to Astoria, where the Columbia river empties into the Pacific to start our trip. The picture on the right though is from the very southern most state beach in Oregon, so close to California that we could have walked there in a few minutes. It's one of my favorite pictures from the trip though so it got posted first. It's the first time I've been fairly close to a group of pelicans just off shore and been able to watch them diving into the water after fish. I found it amazing to watch them hit the water, beak first, at high speed. They must have some pretty fancy engineering to be able to do that. A friend that I showed the picture to told me that they have a protective membrane that comes over their eyes as they hit the water that lets them see clearly underwater.
I like the fuzzy stuff on the top of their heads. I found out after I got back home that pelicans hang out in Noyo Harbor near where fishing boats come in and I went and took some pictures of local ones up close, one came up to within three feet of me. At first I thought it was being friendly but when it tried to spear me with it's beak I realized that it was being territorial. I guess it's a good thing I didn't try to pet it. Someone else I showed my pelican pictures to though said that down near Santa Cruz you can sometimes pet the pelicans there.
I call this image to the right "Steam Punk Sentry". It was taken up in Astoria on the waterfront, the rusty gear was some kind of apparatus to do something with boats in the past I assume. There were a number of enigmatic mechanical things just off shore there on cement pillars in the water. We spent one night in Astoria, found a nice natural food coop in the evening for dinner after walking along the waterfront and went shopping for books at a local thrift store in the morning before heading south. I harvested books at thrift stores and library sales all along our trail home to sell at my next book sale in September. Books are one of my major addictions.
We spent the next night in Florence at the Lighthouse Inn where we stayed the last time we did this trip in 2009. It's a block from the interesting area of old town and right around the corner from a thrift store that I found some good books at last time through. That proved to be true this time also. To the left is a sandpiper, one of many searching for food in a marshy area adjacent to the marina near old town.
We spent a couple of nights in Bandon at the Table Rock motel just 50 yards from the beach, and a very nice beach it was. There is so much public access to the ocean in Oregon that it's incredible. The islands off Bandon are a wildlife sanctuary. We went to another nearby place, a wetlands restoration project and enjoyed having a hunting hawk fly a few feet above our heads. I wasn't fast enough to get a picture of it however. The beetle to the right was hanging out on a rock near the ocean in Bandon. It was fairly large, almost two inches long and had lots of interesting furry stuff on it's undersides. It wasn't moving much but it was evening and fairly cool. I love it's color and textures. The next time we go up to do the Salem fair I think afterwards we are just going to head straight to Bandon and spend several days there exploring the richness of the natural world in it's vicinity.
