Roiling Waters On the Oregon Coast

My First Visit in a Decade

The more north I drove up the coast, as anyone knows who has been north of the Bay Area, the higher the cliffs became. The ocean appeared darker, deeper in its greens and blues, and gurgling as if some kraken was wiggling in its unrestful sleep just below the water’s surface.

I slept just outside of Fort Bragg on my way to the north Oregon coastline to meet a scientist, Sarah Gravem, as she did some surveys. I was excited to finally meet her in person after a month of talking and back and forth emails. And although I was driving up solely to meet her and her team very early the following day to go tidepooling, I was just not prepared for what the coastline would be. It had been over a decade since I had been to the Oregon coast and over the years my picture of it had turned into only a slightly more dramatic mendocino  coastline in my head. I thought of it as full of rain, tall cliffs and rings of white water surrounding rocks jutting out of the ocean. For anyone who has been to the Northern California coast can attest, this is true.

For those who know the Oregon coastline as well, this seems fairly accurate. And in some way it is. However, when I say the Oregon coast is much more formidable, that the coastline feels more wild, more unforgiving, it just simply is true. The waves for the week and a half that I would be there were forecasted anywhere between eight and fifteen feet for the whole trip. The rocks along the coastline were more like steep islands, large and wide skyscrapers that pushed back against the ceaselessness of the winter and spring storms along the coast as the rains soaked the roads. Long stretches of beach still meander out into wide and tall dunes as they used to before we built many of these coastal highways, as if this coastline is only allowing some to live there despite itself.

This isn’t to say there are no majestic and giant skyscrapers that jut out of the ocean, or large swaths of dunes in Northern California. The waters just feel bigger in Oregon is all. In a way, it feels like an entirely unwelcoming place in its magnitude, allowing you to admire its vastness only for brief moments. 

As I drove further up into Oregon, the roads became more precarious, full of sudden potholes or many feet of crumbling cement just trying to test any car’s suspension while driving at fifty miles an hour in the rain as the winds shook the douglas firs’. 

It was quickly getting late and night was coming and I wanted to find a good spot to stay. Unfortunately almost all of the state parks, seeing as the spring and summer season was not open yet, were closed for campers, and I couldn’t find a good road to stay on. I had made it past Newport, and was at the lookout that Gravem told me to meet her at. It seemed like a doable place to stay and some Sprinter’s were parked there as well. It was basically night by this point but I wanted to find a more secluded spot. So, I drove south a bit, reading about a small parking lot. I wound around a small two lane road just off the highway which suddenly turned into a one way. I got to the parking lot and nothing was there except two street lights surrounded by tall trees moving in the rain. The thought of having only one way to get in and out just didn’t sit right with me so I left. I drove up a bit further trying to see if there were any open camping areas, but the RV parks were mostly full. 

The rains got heavier along with the winds. I ended up going back to the wide open pull out and sleeping there. Every hour or so I woke up to my entire car shaking in the wind. I was plenty warm, but the sound of the rain and wind just wouldn’t let up. I barely slept that night. So, when the light started peaking out, I was excited that I could leave my shaking car and head somewhere else just a little more calm. At least, after we went tide pooling beside these large waves.

As we were heading down to the tide pools and study site, I told Gravem about the rocky night I had. She told me she never camps on the coast, a person who has dedicated her studies to the creatures on the Oregon coastline. “It’s not worth it,” she said. She likes to go to the coast, but to camp just a bit more inland for a little more comfort

After we went tide pooling and Gravem and her team headed back to Corvallis, I started back down the coast, slowly making my way to Eugene, stopping here and there to look at the views. The sun peaked in and out as I drove and, just outside of Florence I saw a giant pull out with some folks staring down into the ocean, so I stopped. Down below I saw rolling waves, some ten feet high in bright aquamarine waters. Sea lions, to me the most aggressive intimidating mammals of the sea, were huddled together on some rocks just below the pullout’s edge, some three hundred feet below. It was marvelous. I noticed an older man admiring something on the other edge. I asked him what it was he was looking at. He pointed out some more sea lions swimming though the breaking waves. As he left to go into his car he said there were hundreds out there, floating together in the open waters. I walked further around the pull out and thought I spotted a kelp bed far off the coastline. But no, it was all those sea lions, each with one fin up, floating in the torrent of all this cold water, lit up and shining for a brief moment in the seldom seen sunlight of the Oregon coast. They were just floating there, as if this was not a formidable place for them to call home.