Jan 25 Cedar Valley on bike and another sunset

Tuesday I rode the Cedar Valley loop.  Backwards this time so that I would be in the noon sun going up a very shady Cedar valley. I shouldn't have worried because the temperature went from 53 to 61 as I turned up the valley.

Wonderful smells of cedar, bay, acacia, and skunk cabbage. The first Narcissus were blooming near Euchre creek. Port Orford cedar were showy with new growth and even a few camellias were beginning to bloom.

The first of my rhodies has two blooms!  Frogs croaked and wild turkeys gobbled and clucked.

I crept closer but the turkeys bolted.

Jan 22 cloudless and cool

sunrise & moonset

After three days of spectacular skies, a full moon, and three dimensional, aurora-like sunsets, finally a day that doesn't send me to the beach at day-break and night-fall until my fingers cramp from the cold.

I just purchased a three-position lens hood. It seems to help the quality of the contrast but I should have rolled it back before I took wide-angle shots. I kind of like the effect though. Its like looking out a porthole.

Last night's sunset. It just kept getting better.

Jan 20 sunset/moonset

Myers Creek

Sunset last night

Moonset this morning

Jan 18 cloudy

the view from the deck on a calm day

Its been more or less rainy since Locke and Imy left on Thursday.  Its been nice to catch up on cleaning, paperwork, and figure out how to use "elluminate" to take an on-line Spanish class.

a not-so calm ocean

Yesterday it cleared in the afternoon and I got a nice beach walk in.

Foam  and beach-walker trails

Sisters rocks X 2

another surf shot of the endlessly photographic Pacific.

Today started out nice but the clouds moved in shortly after daybreak. It has been amazingly warm since the low pressure began last week. Its been in the 50's even at night and I have to open a window to sleep well.
The lettuce is starting to bulk up in the covered raised beds and the chickens are beginning to lay more eggs--about six / day instead of three.

receding wave

Terri had her last couple of days at Tu'tu'tun Lodge while Bjorn shoes did a photo-shoot. She brought the chickens leftovers-walnut and blue cheese popovers, rosemary focaccio,  homemade fontina crackers, olive-oil poached lin-cod with mustard caper sauce, and steamed carrots and yams. Spoiled chickens!

Jan 10 frosty AM--still sunny

We have had some lovely hikes during all this good weather with Imy here. With Juli, Randy, and Andrew, we hiked the Oregon coast trail from Indian sands south toward Whale's Head. It was windy but nice on the path with the tree tops rustling and bending above us.

Yesterday Imy and I took a short walk to the beach then she went to Port Orford with Locke.
I  cleaned out the chicken house and resecured the raised bed covers where the chickens had found an entry point and decimated my young greens. Again!
So I replanted mixed winter greens, butter crunch lettuce and bloomsdale spinach.

Jan 6 Wow! Sunny again!

Imy arrived on Tuesday night. Andrew picked her up in Roseburg and they went to a Umpqua valley waterfall and returned to the coast through Myrtle Point and Coquille.

Imy used my camera and she gave me permission to post some of the pictures she took.

Yesterday we got up early and drove to the Redwoods.

We stopped at Crescent city and watched surfers.

We were pretty much the only tourists  exploring the "trees  of mystery" site. We rode the sky-tram up to the top and admired the view of snow-covered mountains and the rock-studded pacific.

After walking back down we wandered through the crazy Indian museum then went south, 20 miles to Orick so I could attempt to find a piece of monkey-puzzle wood. None of the owners of the "Redwood burls and other exotic woods" places had even heard of a monkey puzzle tree-in spite of the fact that there is a 25 foot high tree on 101, in downtown Orick--a town of 650 people. Go figure.

Today Locke, Imy and I biked the Cedar valley loop. It was cold by the time we got to the saddle. There's a bull  at Fergerson ranch who is entertaining with his bellowing and that of the returning echo.

Jan 2 blue skies and big surf

Yesterday Julie brought gold fish over to put in the pond.

Driving back from her house we noticed the gigantic waves and stopped at the beach just north of Nesika where she found agates and I took pictures. I was surprised by the patterns made by the spent surf. But generally I failed to capture the spectacular wave action-twenty five footers breaking a quarter mile off-shore.

Later in the day, Locke and I went to Otter Point where he went onto the beach and I walked  onto the point that is made up of black rocks, red clad, grey sand, brown dirt permeated with multi-color pebbles, topped with hardy greens.

Today was cool and sunny again but probably hit 50 degrees by 1:00 pm. I walked north along the beach, taking more pictures and finding a couple of small agates. I became infatuated with the character of the residual foamy residue after  the waves displaced their immense energy.

backdraft