Travels around Corvallis
September 13, 14, & 16, 2008
9/13: Lily invited me to Eugene for a reunion of sorts - Tom and Lucy were visiting Oregon. So we met at the Pizza Research Institute followed by a slumber party at Liesl's house. (Liesl is a Ph.D. student in neuroscience at the University of Oregon in Eugene.) The next day, I took Lily back to Lost Valley and got a tour of the property.
Carleton Reunion! (Liesl van Ryswyk, Thomas Smith, Lily Jacobson, Lucy Hodgman) at the Pizza Research Institute in Eugene (September 13)
Lily in her attic room at Lost Valley.
A logging road near Lost Valley
The grandmother tree - a giant Douglas fir saved from logging in a commercially-logged forest.
Inside the sacred yurt - a ceremonial space at Lost Valley.
Lily and me.
9/16: Since I hadn't seen an ocean in 16 years, a trip to the coast was a high priority. So on the first day I had free, I drove to Newport and down the coast. Ali (my housemate) came along, and our first stop (after the beach) was the Rogue brewery. The day was 90 degrees and clear in Corvallis but 57 degrees and foggy on the beach, so the views were not always there.
Ali calls these waves small. They look big to me...
Highway 101 bridge over Yaquina Bay in Newport.
Rogue brewery entrance
Inside the brewery
Ali and our beer samples. Very tasty!
After giving our beer and clam chowder some time to settle, we headed south along the coast through Waldport and Yachats to Cape Perpetua, a high headland that Ali was eyeing for mushrooms and I was eyeing for its old-growth coastal rainforest. We found plenty of both.
Ali and the rock shelter atop Cape Perpetua.
The largest tree on the cape - a 500+-year-old Sitka Spruce that is 15 feet across at the base and perhaps 8 feet in diameter higher up.
Tree and me.
We opted for a 6.5-mile loop hike through old-growth forest, up the Gwynn Creek Trail (middle blue line) and back on the Cook's Ridge Trail (upper blue line), with a brief stretch along the coast that is part of the Oregon Coast Trail.
A break in the fog and a view of the Pacific.
Ali and the old growth. We found quite a few delicious lobster and chanterelle mushrooms along the trail.
Big, slimy, and yellow...must be a banana slug!
We took the scenic route back - windy Hwy 34 from Waldport to Philomath - which is less scenic at night and very narrow but still an interesting drive.