Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 42: The Beach at Roads End

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I've alluded to Roads End before.

To recap, it's a community at the north end of Lincoln City; if you're leaving L.C. on the north side, Hwy 101 curves inland towards Neotsu, the Hwy 18 junction, Neskowin and points north. Just at that point where it curves away from the beach, a road, Logan Road, strikes northward further but into a cul-de-sac of a residential district where L.C.'s highest-numbered streets can be found. Blocked in by a headland literally just north of the city limits, one must turn around to get back out; ergo, road's end. 

It's a charming little neighborhood with a very accessible beach access. And that's where we went.

 It's also very very popular. Parking was easy to get to and hard to actually find. But we did, and had our reward thereupon.

The wind as mas macho this day and spray coated our glasses and we had to take time and wipe 'em; I nearly lost Birthday Hat for good, pretty close. There was a fellow there who did two things simultaneously that Oregonians do when they go to the beach: fly a kite and board the waves. The photo, back before this last one, shows him; he leapt and soared but came back down quickly each time, and looked quite exhilarated.

Actually, here, we came back. We were intending  to finally strike out for the Valley, and home, but after we got just past the Hwy 18 turnoff, the Girl turned round and we went back; north of that, 101 did its inland thing and we both wanted to see a bit more of the ocean, feel the breeze, hear the surf.

And why not? We could. That's the beauty of being grown ups. When you're kids on a trip to the coast, you're driving away from the beloved beach and you have to go along with that. But if you're a grown-up and you're behind the wheel, you want one more good look at the Pacific, then you get it. It's your call.

We got what we needed, in this grace-note last look. Stiff breeze, the smell of the sea, the roar of the surf, people enjoying the beach in that Oregon way (down jackets, kiteboarders, the freshness of the air), the clouds coming down to touch the water ... and we left when we were good and ready.

Adultness has its burdens, and life is finite in span and constrained in possibilities, but we do have this and, for the time being, it kind of makes it all worth it. 

I love Lincoln County. 

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 41: Lincoln City Street Blades, In Passing

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As we came back through L.C., I got me some street blade pix. 

You know. How I do.

The street grid in Lincoln City holds endless fascination for me, as I've said before. I'm coming up with an article that I'll submit to a blog of a fellow I very much respect exploring it. For now, it's only necessary to know this: for directional prefixes, the city is quartered by US 101, L.C.'s main street, and the "D" River into NW, NE, SW and SE quadrants. 

The average L.C. city street blade looks more or less like this:

There are a few obvious observations that one can make from this, and they aren't outre at all. L.C. follows a standard and predictable design logic which renders an easily-understood design grammar: the directional and the specific are of a lesser size which cause the actual street name (or number in this case) to be the star of the design. The ordinal, in the case of the numbered street, is appropriately sized.

The blade that's very oblique in this view can be seen a bit clearer, though smaller, in the deep background, at the corner with NE 18th Pl. It simply says N HWY 101. South Hwy 101 is called out in identical style on the other side of the "D" River.

The fascination in L.C. isn't so much in the simplicity of of the design but it the way it's actually somewhat inconsistently applied. Not too far from this corner, we found this:

This gives a good view of the standard named blade in town, and a very oblique view again of another. Here one can see that the generic ST doesn't line up with the directional like on the top blade, rather, it's centered. The impression given, when compared with other L.C. street blades, is a bit of casual sloppiness. 

There are other blade sets which come off as kind of avant garde, such as this one:

Here the layout is followed faithfully, but the font jumps out at you. I'm pretty sure that that Helvetica-esque font isn't an MUTCD standard, it looks atypical for street blades and, except for the capital "I" in the street name Inlet, there are no majuscules anywhere, and it's used in a very consistent way on the blades. 

It's a bit of a wonder, really.

And that concludes our little tour of the street blades of Lincoln City. 

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 40: Late Afternoon, The Deco District

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This was a picture that was taken late in the afternoon the day before those I just posted at Beverly Beach. I wanted to drop a comment on this area of Newport before I moved on.

There's an area of Newport they locally call the Deco District. This also happens to be Newport's official downtown. The heart of it is the block of Coast Hwy between SW Hurbert St and SW Alder St. Specifically at Coast Hwy and Alder there are a School District admin building, a historic theater that's a church at this point, and the old Newport City Hall, which now houses a branch of the Pig 'n' Pancake Restaurant empire. They're all toward the end of this block you'll see in my picture:

Taken as is in this shot, late on an afternoon in the latter part of August during the long tail of the Covid pandemic, it seems a bit forlorn. But the Deco-styled tower front of the theater should be unmissable.

Google Street View of the corner, sharked by me just a few minutes ago, looks like this:

The type on the buildings forms an underpinning to the Art Deco visual grammar which unifies the awareness across the two buildings. I understand there's a mural with the Pig 'n' Pancake pig logo in Deco style as well. I regret now not taking a few more minutes, what we had, to take a few extra snaps, but we'll go to Newport again. 

It's a very charming touch to a very charming town. I've always loved Newport. 

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 38: The Coast Guard Station At Newport

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Another shot as we were getting our get-out-of-Newport (sad as that is) energy together, a true local landmark.

Not only is Newport a major place with NOAA, it's not unimportant to the US Coast Guard. Here, on SW Naterlin Drive, just up from the Bayfront, is the Newport Coast Guard Station. It is a terribly charming nautical thing in a town that's brimming with terribly charming nautical things. 

Alongside of it there is a retired motor lifeboat, CG-36503 Yaquina Bay, and it stands as a memorial to those who died doing their duty on the sea and three CG sailors are named particularly. Full information on that can be found at the link you visit if you click on these here words.

The building itself is very cozy looking, rather rustic in that seaside-town way. A small serrated edge is put on the charm by the Department of Homeland Security tag on the sign, but that is, alas, the planet we live on now.

A cute family tale:

Way back in the long-ago, when my late mother-in-law was but a young woman, she lived in Newport, which was where the family first came to rest in Oregon after leaving Montana (as I understand it). She worked as a cocktail waitress down in Waldport, and while coming home, as they reached the north end of the Bay Bridge, her car's muffler gave out with a bang.

Taking the car off the main drag for, I presume, safety's sake, meant turning down Naterlin Drive past the CG station. The bang on the bridge and the rumble of the car woke the personnel there, bringing the young Coasties out to investigate.

I don't know how the rest of that night worked out, but I imagine a young woman suffering car trouble in the middle of the night in a small town could have worse things happen than a group of hunky young service men in little more than skivvies coming out to see if they can offer an assist.

Calendars get made with less of an excuse than that. And so it goes.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 37: How Not to Die After An Earthquake At Agate Beach

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I'd say the biggest change since I visited the beach as a kid is the constant awareness of whether or not you're in harms' way about a tsunami.

No, not biggest ... most fundamental, maybe would be better coinage. When I was a lad, earthquakes happened in California, not here, and what we then immaturely called tidal waves only happened in Japan. Oregon had volcanoes, but there had been no eruptions during my lifetime (until that time) or my parents' or grandparents', and nobody really talked about that until about 1970 or so. Cascade volcanoes were called dormant, and by dormant then we meant yeah, they erupted once but they don't do that any more, they've learnt how to behave LOL. 

Geologically, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest was a pretty boring place to be and we liked it that way. Now, of course, we know that Cascadia is quite almost all the time except when it isn't and then we probably all gonna die, enjoy your IPA, have a nice day, live it like it's your last ... aaaand anyway.

Tsunami awareness is not an offical Coastal Fact Of Life, and you see it in a great many places. Perhaps the scariest is the way they paint the boundaries to the hazard zones right on the pavement, which makes my mind start scripting a disaster movie with me and The Girl as the stars, but then, I just enjoyed the hell out of the disaster film Greenland, so there's me for you.

But a little knowledge is power, and it's provided accessibly and for free, because at almost every public beach access, you get a geology lesson, or at least you get this:

A color-coded save-your-ass guide to seeing the beach. Local streets and landmarks or clear and prominent, as well as the quickest way to high ground. Also note that there is more than one level of doom here. The buff color, which only encompasses the beach itself plus a little across the road, is the tsunami danger area for a distant quake. The light green is for when it gets serious, like if Cascadia Next actually happens.

Man, that takes in a bunch of ground, don't it?

Thankfully, the way to high ground isn't far, but ... well, you know how vacation drivers are. 

We still might be goners.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 36: Burgers at Agate Beach

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Hamburgers.

The cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.

They're even more nutritious when you eat them with this view:

Nothing like this place anywhere near this place. This, then, ought to be the place. Word.

Agate Beach is just north of the central part of the city of Newport, and the way to get there is follow a local street creatively named NW Oceanview Dr. If one gets the feeling that this was the old Coast Highway, one would not be wrong about this, and at the place it bottoms out, there's a state wayside parking area on the inland side of the road, and a wide turnout on the shore side.

There's also a unit of the once-titanic Arctic Circle chain in Newport (yes, we miss these). We came armed with a couple of sides, fries and cheese curds, and nature's perfect food ... the hamburger (well, cheeseburgers). And we ate and just basked in the Coast air, and at this pint, eating burgers at the beach is pretty much peak Us. 

A few words about Agate Beach itself; it is so-named because it does indeed have agate tides. Latterly they are much fewer and far between than in our dimly-remembered past. An article online at Oregon Coast Beach Connection puts it thusly:

Long ago, Agate Beach had plenty of agates. They were hugely abundant. But according to Oregon coast agate expert and author K.T. Myers, the beach stopped being productive as long ago as the ‘60s. This came about when the jetties in Yaquina Bay were elongated, and dredging equipment also began dumping their sand load right off Agate Beach and Nye Beach. Winter storms could no longer cut through the 20-plus feet of sand dunes that grew in the area.

So, there's that. Sic transit gloria agates.

It's still lovely, and quintessentially Newport. So, there's also that.  

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 35: The West End Of Bay Boulevard

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Just one more of the Newport Bayfront before we move along ... and, moving along from Newport is very hard to do. It's an absurdly easy town to fall in love with.

At the west end of SW Bay Blvd, the view looks like this:

There's that extraordinarily lovely bridge again. It feels a little different in person than it does in picture, but there's a feeling of space in the way the arch of the main span of the Bay Bridge towers over the district there. It feels like a historically-great place, this corner of Newport. 

This happens at the extreme western end of SW Bay Boulevard. to the right, a single block of SW Bay Street connects you to SW 13th St, which leads you to the neighborhood between US 101 and the harborfront, there, or SW Naterlin Dr, which takes you directly back to 101 and the Bay Bridge and points north and south.

This part of Newport is tourist-trappy, but in the good way. These little colorful shops were browsed in at length by the Brown Eyed Girl, as she is wont to do, for two things: a tchotchke, to hang from her considerable keyring, and candy. 

The Oregon Coast is a place for candy shops. 

The one there on the right, Republic of Candy, and on the left, Brandy's Bargains. The narrow blue storefront in the middle is vacant, and I figured out why: noting some of the public notices posted thereabouts and the near-term plans of the shopkeepers, that segment of buildings is to be redeveloped. Brandy's moving to a place up on US 101, I think it was, and the PM of the Republic of Candy was going to re-orient his business to more upscale consumers, probably selling online, both reasonable and prudent stances to take, given the context of the times.

Brandy was a charming woman, and the Republic of Candy held many imports, not the least of which was an authentic English Mars bar (price: $3, and presumably worth it). They were both very conversational which was also expected: our experience held true, that few people like to talk about the work they do more than a merchant on the Oregon Coast.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 32: Bay Boulevard, Newport, Oregon

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Bay Boulevard is Newport's Front Street, the first street layed out when they decided to plant the town here along Yaquina Bay. It follows the bay in its angular way, and its direction influenced the growth and layout of the original town, as a glance of the map of the town will suggest.

It's a charming area with cute shops and an attraction or two; not too far ahead and off to the right from where I was standing to take this picture used to be a tourist dive called the Undersea Gardens, which was a literal dive; one would walk down a gangway to a floating structure which allowed you to step into a room below water level and see the sea life. Divers would put on shows. It was sort of an inverted aquarium. Time moved on without it though; After about 50 years in business, the competition from the now-world class Oregon Coast Aquarium (how were you going to compete with Keiko?) and escalating maintenance costs spelled the end of the line for it. There was a Madame Toussaut's Wax Museum outpost down on the bayfront as well for a long time.

Up the street and around the corner, though, there's still a branch of the Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, though that's a little too touristy for us these days. 

The atmosphere, though? That still can't be beat. 

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 31: Something Something Bayfront Something Bay Bridge

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Some things make excellent backdrops for other things. The other thing here is the human activity and masts of fishing boats docked in the harbor area of Yaquina Bay; the some thing is a bridge I may have heard of somewhere, I don't know, I just don't know anymore.

The offshore mist, though, that, I've always found romantic and easy on the eyes. 

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 30: Mural of Neptune, Newport Bayfront

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Having returned to Newport from the Devil's Churn to Newport, we found another motel in town ($$$) but had a good night sleeping. The next day was looking for more memories.

Here's a pretty one. We lingered on Newport's Bayfront and it was a good thing because when we were tourists when I was a kid we rarely went down there. The Bayfront is pretty fantastic, a colorful place where there are cute shops, many fishing boats and a number for working seafood processors. The air is redolent with the smell of them, but it was a good smell.

This mural, with Neptune looking out in the direction of the bay, was on the side of a building toward the east end of the commercial area of Bay Boulevard.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 29: The Devil's Churn

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This is a spot worth seeing, and we felt emotions worth feeling.

There seem to be a surplus of places in wild area's like this named for the Devil. God may own the world, I guess, but the Devil's doing well enough to get naming rights to things. The Devil has a Punchbowl up near Otter Rock, and a Churn just south of Yachats.

Maybe that's where he gets his butter, who knows? 

But, in seriousness, what the Devil's Churn is, is a very very small inlet of the ocean. A very long time ago, the Pacific started worrying at a small crevice in the rocky shore. That crevice became a cave, which probably collapsed to form a crevasse, and in which the ocean's surf just kept working away at until it gets very narrow and very dramatic.

It is said that the incoming waves impacting the narrow end of the crevasse can send spray up hundreds of feet, but even if it isn't doing that, it's still impressive to watch. 

I can still hear the crashing of the water coming in.

This is a few minutes south of Yachats on US 101, though if you aren't familiar with the craggy shore, it might seem like forever. Leaving Yachats means the end of the friendly, flat and open shore of the central Coast and Lincoln County for the aggressively uncompromising crags of Cape Perpetua. This is USFS land, and is managed by the US Government. The wayside is comfortable and impressive, and offers this great view.

But you have to have a little bit of guts to drive that stretch of OCH. There's precious little shoulder on the seaward side, which drops straight away; this caused me to grip the door handle a little more firmly on the way down, the Brown Eyed Girl (in the pilot's seat) to be similarly wary on the way back, and both of us, I think, to respect the existential practicality of the average Oregon Coast resident, who countenances this sort of thing on a daily basis.

They always did seem to be the doughty sorts.

The wayside lets you get, to a degree, a bit up-close and personal with the business end of the Churn. It's most impressive and you get a sense of the power there.

It's not a thing to be taken lightly. One can go down there; there's nobody to stop you, but it's terribly easy to get yourself messed up permanently. Not long after we visited a vacationer from Walnut Creek, California decided to explore up toward the end of the chute and lost his life after slipping and falling because of a split second's inattention. Best to stay back and take pictures, I think. 

On a more cheerful level, this was something of a peak experience for the Brown Eyed Girl. She comes from a long line of women who have had a long operating love affair with the forces of nature at work, and the crashing of the surf into the end of the channel has always had a special allure for her. She could gaze at this particular place for hours, entranced by the natural power at work here and I, taking my cue from her reverence, began to listen for the heartbeat of nature here both aurally and visually. 

As a girl, she was beholden to the whims and plans of adults as to how she came here and how long they stayed. This day, she was in the pilots' seat, and she said when we came and when we went. I was along for the ride at this point, and that was fine with me, because she was sharing this dear and mighty thing that was so very special to her. The drive back north - this was as far south as we were destined to go on this visit - created a vivid memory, one I'll never forget, of a placid happiness that was quite unique. 

That of reaching out to grab something of great value, holding on to it until one is ready to let go, and not before, and not on anyone else's word. 

The day-use area, a bit of which is pictured here above, is well-kept and comfortable even if you're just stopping by for a short visit. There's an adjacent RV parking area which you can use overnight for dropping a small bit of cash into the collection box, which we did, because why not? The place gave us both a dear memory that'll last the rest of our collective lives, and that's worth something, and a few bucks to help the cause is a minuscule price to pay for that.

The experience and memory is something that one doesn't think they'll discover after more than 30 years as part of a couple: a new shared experience that lines up next to the mileposts that one passed when one was part of a new couple. 

It's part of how those who are lucky enough to grow aged keep a little bit of youth along for the ride. That's worth it. 

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 28: The Bridge At Waldport

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Waldport is a town about 15 miles south of Newport, on the south bank of the Alsea Bay, which is where the Alsea River enters the Pacific Ocean. It's a charming town.

And, like the highway crossing at Newport, it has its own signature bridge. This is it.

While it's much newer than the Yaquina Bay Bridge, it carries the same themes of sweep and arch that most Oregon Coast Highway bridges do.

Conde McCullough's mark lives on, you might say.

The current bridge dates from 1991. Up until then the original McCullough design spanned the mouth of the bay; built in the 1930s, its construction was sturdy but not durable enough for the rather corrosive weather that the Oregon Coast delivered season in and season out, year after year. By the 1980s the maintenance became expensive enough that the cost of replacing the bridge didn't seem so expensive after all. 

This span has four lanes in both directions (compared to the only-one-lane in each direction that the Yaquina Bay Bridge) does and has a much wider-open feeling. 

The pillars on each end of the bridge borrow from the original design motifs as well. It's not a McCullough design, but if he were alive today, it could have been. It understands the design grammar he laid down like a native.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary), Part 27: Port-land, Oregon

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The symmetry of this sign pleases me greatly.

Portland is a city in Oregon, but Oregon is a Port-land as well. Waldport, Newport, here a port, there a port, everywhere a port-port.

The way the traffic has to access the bridge requires that the arrow for Newport points toward Waldport, and the one point to Waldport, Newport. Do not be misled ... or if you are, at least have fun with it. 

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 26: We Headed for Waldport After This Picture, Promise

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... however, I never promised I wouldn't ever post another picture of the Yaquina Bay Bridge, and that's a not-promise I never not am intending to not ... ah, break.

The narrow angle with the roadway (taken from the loop road around and under the bridge and next to that entrance to Yaquina Bay State Park) provides the visual punch and, not coincidentally, highlights the handsome styling of the bridge piers and supports.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 21: Yaquina Head and the Surf

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The thing about driving 101 down the central Oregon Coast ... Lincoln City to Yachats ... is that so much of the beach is visible from the road. It seems less so in other areas;

The stretch of 101 in Tillamook County, for example, after you get past Neahkanie Mountain, Tillamook Bay, and Tillamook dances about inland a few miles. You're still down on the coast, but you feel as though you're inland. Not that it's a bad trip, mind. But there's not really any ocean to look at from the car. Once you pass Neskowin and get south of the Hwy 18 tie-in, bop around in the hills just north of Lincoln City then once you're in L.C. you can see the ocean from nearly the entire road. 

You can glimpse some of the coastal mist near 101 and 18; that's the floodplain of the Salmon River, opening up to the sea. 

Then, after this, there are great stretches of 101 that are within sight and sound of the sea. And once you get along Beverly Beach, just north of the Newport city limits, you get some of the best angles.

That promontory ahead is a point called Yaquina Head and it's basically the north end of the city of Newport, one of my favorite places on earth. They have a cute little neighborhood there and tidepools (not this time, but again) and theres the working lighthouse out there.

And all the breakers. This is another picture I can hear. And so very typical of US 101 in Lincoln County. 

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 20: A Glimpse of Downtown Depoe Bay

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The city center of Depoe Bay is a delightful place, really; a few blocks of charming tchotchke shops, souvenir shops with an artistic bent, and placed to get food and candy

There's been changes, of course. The most notable is the aquarium that used t be there. In the middle of that block of storefronts is one with two gabled details, and for many years it was an aquarium. It was faced in rock stucco, all the passages inside were faced in the same, and it had windows to small aquaria that let you look salt water fauna both common and a few uncommon, but the big draw were the resident pinnipeds at the back. They were loud and smelt like you think they would, and they'd sell us little bags of cut-up fish and we'd all throw it to them.

The other thing I remember the most about it is the salt-water taffy we'd always get specifically there. Naturally, we stopped by Ainslee's, which has been killing it the taffy department since before I was alive. We're going through it piece-by-piece now; it's just as nifty as I remember.

Ainslee's have a taffy-pulling and -wrapping machine in the front window but they were done with the day's manufacture by the time we stopped by. But it's still there, which is a plus.

Just a bit of historical fact to drop here: Depoe Bay was named for an indigenous resident who our history remembers as one Charley Depoe. He was a Siletz indian (part of the Tututni tribe from southwest Oregon) who was given land allotments under the Dawes Act of 1887, and some of that allotment got sold and became the land that became Depoe Bay. Cutler City, the neighborhood at the south end of Lincoln City, also sprang from one of Depoe's allotments.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 19: The World's Smallest Harbor, More Boats, And A Buoy

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Depoe Bay is a little, fun place between Lincoln City and Newport.

(Look, friends, you can only say 'small Coastal town' so many times before you realize that that's hardly a unique thing. Anyway).

It is promoted that Depoe Bay is the 'world's smallest navigable harbor'. Again, as with the 'D' River in Lincoln City, there is no universally recognized authority that has the say. There may (or may not) be working harbors that are just a s'kosh smaller, there's no clear way of telling even in this internet-besotted age (and, to be sure, being connected to that vast mass of info seems to faithfully confirm little-to-nothing any more). But when one looks at it, it is pretty small and it is a busy place to be.

That's the whole of it, right there from my vantage point on the north end of the US 101 bridge over the cove's mouth. A lot of commercial fishing and charter trips come out of here, and the reputation of Depoe Bay as the place to watch the gray whale migration on the Oregon Coast doubtless boosts its economic throw-weight all the more.

The sign boasts similarly to the sign at he 'D' River crossing up in L.C.

I snapped da pix while the Brown Eyed Girl looked for souvenirs and salt-water taffy and there's a very friendly energy in Depoe Bay.

There's also a blockhouse on the north end of that bridge ..

Small, old type over the entry proclaim DEPOE BAY PARK, and the banner in the far right hand window there proclaim WHALE WATCHING CENTER, but the small sign in the entry way states closed-due-to-Covid. 

There's a pandemic on, you know.

But we've got enough of our heads on straight, and our masks on those heads, that we can go out and enjoy. 

And, just as off Boiler Bay, there were boats. Oh, buoy.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 18: Birds and Boats at Boiler Bay

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Just on the north side of that small place called Depoe Bay is a notch in the shoreline called Boiler Bay.

There is a State Parks wayside there and we took the opportunity to pull off, go down, and listen to the surf.

Boiler Bay is not named as such because of the turbulent surf.

 Boiler Bay is named as such because a ship blew up here in 1910. It was a steam-powered schooner, the J. Marhoffer, only three years old, which exploded because of an accident with the ships boiler.

The boiler still remains, and can be seen at extreme low tides. Don't bother looking for it in the picture I've provided, in other words. And if you decide to climb down there when it is extreme low tide, be careful. People get hurt that way. 

Your puny rules, they do
not apply, to me, human.

Because of the ruggedness of the shore at that point, there is no beach access (proper, as there is really no beach). But the viewing area goes out a ways, farther than it did when I was a kid, and provided a surfeit of the things that me and the Brown Eyed Girl go to the beach for ... ocean air, the sound of surf. And seagulls.

Thing about seagulls is they knew how to spot the main chance and know who the soft touches are. When we arrived at Boiler Bay, we had a big WinCo bag of bulk pretzels; by the time we left, less than half, which made their ways into the happy gizzards of a small flock of seagulls (hey, that'd make a good name for a band, don't you think) and a couple of crows. Several juveniles amongst that flock, and at least one of them was using their baby-gull creel to pour on the cute. It worked on these soft-touches like a charm.

While Boiler Bay is one of the premier whale-watching locales on the central Coast, this is not the whale watching season. Being a scant mile or two from the mouth of Depoe Bay harbor, though, there were plenty of boats out, looking for much smaller fish, or maybe just enjoying the day out there.  And it did look like they were having a bit of fun about it.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversary) Part 17: A Piece Of Hwy 101 In L.C.

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This is US 101, the main street of Lincoln City, as you approach the D River Crossing at the middle of town:

Note that I said the middle, not the center. Lincoln City doesn't have a center. It has four or five of them. 

L.C. is a town of towns. In 1965, the communities of Oceanlake, Delake, Nelscott, Taft, and Cutler City, some organized towns and some not, decided they were stronger as a unit than they were separately so, like big stones on a bangle bracelet, they unified. Lincoln City was chosen by vote because it was seen as arrogant to name it after one of the larger towns. And so it became, a small town on the Oregon Coast that was scarely a mile wide ... but was about seven miles long.

And the string that holds those pearls together is US 101 (as a matter of fact, one of the rubrics for each urban center that strings together in L.C. is just that, pearls. They know what they have there, I guess).

Now this may seem a little daffy, but for me, for a visit to the beach, one of the simpler pleasures is watching the miles of L.C. roll by via a car window; watching the numbered streets count down from 40th Street in the north (at least that's where 101 joins the grid) to D River then up 69th Street in the south. 

And a picture of cars along 101 as you go through that gangly long town is one of the fondest memories I have.

Sur La Mer (our 31st Anniversarty) Part 16: The D River, If You Insist

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Lincoln City geography has this much in common with that of Portland, and it's this: a river divides it and forms the basis for how the numbered streets are determined.

That's where the similarity ends.

Another few words about Lincoln City geography: It's a long, slender city. Along its northeastern side is a body of water called Devil's Lake (attributed to indigenous legend which may or may not have been misremembered by those who displaced those indigenous people ... provided it wasn't made up entirely). At its south end, Devil's Lake turns a point toward the Pacific and, from that point, issues an outlet.

It's about 400-some feet long, and it drains Devil's Lake directly to the ocean. Most of the time, though, it hardly seems much of a stream at all.

This, then, is the "D River", a vast majority of the time anyone crossing the bridge over it on Hwy 101 in the middle of Lincoln City is likely to see it. Prepare to be awed.

It was documented by the Guinness Book of World Records as world's-shortest for a very long time and the State's road signs at the time exalted it as such as it does today.

However, in 1989, Guinness changed that after a group of school children in Great Falls, Montana, had the channel that allows Giant Springs to drain to the Missouri River, having rendered a result of 201 feet. L.C. boosters countered by arguing that the D was 120 feet long at 'extreme high tide', a claim seeming to try too hard even if you love Oregon having the most remarkable of everything (as I do - my Oregon chauvinism is second to nobody's, as anyone who knows me will tell you).

Faced with having to adjudicate between a group of Oregon Coast boosters on one side and Montana schoolchildren on the other, Guinness took the utterly Solomanic approach of fully recusing itself from further authority, never to declare the world's shortest river ever again, and removing the category from their famous compendium altogether. 

While rolling up the court and going home on the Guinness part is something of a downer, it does mean that we can continue to insist it's the world's shortest river, and there isn't a thing anyone can do to contradict us about it.

And the sign still exists at the 101 bridge: D RIVER -- WORLDS SHORTEST.