The Beauty of the Oregon coast

Finally, we got to the Oregon coast....the first thing was to get to a beach and inhale all that great ocean fragrance ! Ahhhhhhh.

Doesn't that look inviting !?

We let Katie loose on the beach a couple of times....first time she ever saw the Pacific Ocean....or any ocean for that matter.

Zooooooom!

Boy...running after seagulls is exhausting !!

You'll notice the camera angle is a bit jerky (a bit !!??) on this youtube video we uploaded because she's hard to track with the lens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0Ou5x5jwo4&index=14&list=PLhD-K74hlLjLuGi8RiJap9Ugc5k3uD5Ta

Some spectacular views from the land looking at the rock formations.

Look at these gnarly rocks !!

I like to get right down on the ground to take these photos.

We drove out to one lighthouse and got a tour. Cape Blanco, the western-most lighthouse in Oregon.

You can see the Frensel lens which cast the light 20 miles so that the ships could know where they were and avoid the coastal rocks.

View looking north from the top of the lighthouse.

Close-up of the lens. Each of those pieces are individual and put together then shipped to the US.

Here's a link all about the lenses. Interesting article.

http://partsolutions.com/the-million-dollar-lens-the-science-and-history-behind-the-fresnel-lighthouse-lens/

Talk about job security...get this: James Langlois and James Hughes were both stationed at Cape Blanco Lighthouse for their entire career, which lasted forty-two years for Langlois and thirty-seven years for Hughes. 

 By the late 1890s, Keeper Hughes had two children and Langlois five. Fortunately, the second assistant keeper, who lived with the families in the station’s duplex, was single, but still the residence was becoming crowded. The inspector recommended the construction of an additional dwelling at the cape starting in 1897, but it took over ten years of requests before a one-and-a-half-story, frame dwelling was completed in 1910.

http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=125

Cape Blanco Light station in 1936 with both dwellings 

Looking south from the top.

We saw more sights but we'll save that for another entry.

steve/kim/katie

The Dahlias are in bloom !

 While in North Bend/Coos Bay area in Oregon, we visited the Shore Acres Park where there is a wonderful garden full of flowers, trees, shrubs and foliage. This time, the Dahlias were in full bloom. There were four "squares" of them in the gardens. Spectacular.

The yellow squares were filled with the Dahlias.

Let's let the flowers beauty speak for themselves....

They don't allow dogs in the park, so I carried Katie for a while before taking her for a long walk in the nearby forest. She couldn't wait to get down and do some sniffing.

A butterfly came and landed on one of the flowers and stuck around long enough for Kim to take some closeups.

Our camera has a close-up feature on it so we can get right up to the object, so I took some of those to show the amazing Dahlias. Notice how their petals are all unique.

Aren't they gorgeous !!??

These are good photos to show two of the four squares.

There were other greenery around but the stars were the Dahlias. They also have a fantastic viewpoint of the nearby cliffs with breaking waves but that's for another entry.

steve/kim/katie