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The sun was setting and we made it as far as Oceanside.
Tillamook County is unique on the north and central Oregon Coast that there are significant areas of inland settlement - from Lincoln north to Clatsop, towns and people tend to cling to the shore. Tillamook, the county's seat and largest town (not saying much there, since there's not even 6,000 people that call that town home) is more than 5 miles inland, though not far from the southern end of its eponymous Bay, so to go to the beach from Tillamook takes about 20-30 more minutes.
Protip: don't head out west from Tillamook on Hwy 131 toward Oceanside near sunset. That road is pointed straight the sun during this time of year and it is brutal.
'Twas the Brown Eyed Girl's hope that we'd find a small, old-but-not-too-shabby roadside motel that we could hear some surf from. We never did, but in the end it was okay. We did get to Oceanside, which is where Hwy 131 ends, just as the sun was setting.
It was setting behind Three Arch Rocks.
The Three Arch Rocks, are, from left, Finlay Rock, Middle Rock, and Shag Rock. These three large seastacks and about six smaller rocks nearby are quite unique; they form the Three Arch Rocks National Wildlife Refuge. Created in 1907, it's the first NWR west of the Mississippi; at about 15 acres, it's amongst the smallest (if not the smallest). Oregon's largest puffin colony can be found there, and it's an important nesting ground for murres. In the foreground is the parking area for the state wayside there.
From this POV, if one turns 'round, one sees this:
... which is downtown Oceanside. Oceanside isn't a city so much as it's an unincorporated community, a small charming patch of Tillamook County with a handful of business and a number of people who live there as well as a number of people who come and go occasionally.
I've developed the impression that many Coast communities don't have people living there so much as they have people staying there, if one follows my distinction.
Turn around and look up the hill, and you have uptown Oceanside.
Pretty vertiginous perches, no? Those things are gonna rock and roll when Cascadia Next happens.
But they are enviously luxurious.
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