Although I’m definitely a city girl, lately I’ve been feeling the urge to get out of town and visit the Oregon coast. Honestly I think it was partly because I had been looking at pretty Pacific ocean photos on Pinterest, but I was also just craving some peaceful nature. So yesterday Steven and I took off for a little day trip to the oceanside town of Canon Beach.

On the way we stopped at Camp 18, in Elsie, Oregon, for lunch. I’ve passed this place a bunch of times but had never pulled over before. It’s a big rustic lodge with carved wooden sculptures and farming and logging equipment out front, so it’s pretty memorable.

The inside definitely lived up to the exterior, with raw wood, plenty of taxidermy, and informational displays about logging.

After lunch we continued on to Canon Beach, which is famous for Haystack Rock. It’s a tourist town, but since it’s the off-season, it was pretty quiet and a lot of the businesses were closed. We didn’t mind a bit, since that meant there were no traffic or parking problems, and the beach wasn’t crowded.

We walked along the beach and stared out at the ocean. See that rock out in the ocean to the left of Steven in the photo below, with a tiny white building on it? That’s the Tillamook Rock Light, a decommissioned lighthouse that’s now privately owned. Its nickname was “Terrible Tilly” because of the violent, stormy conditions out on the rock.

After we’d had our fill of Canon Beach, we headed south, to Oswalt West State Park, for a little hike.

One of my favorite things about the Oregon coast is that one minute you can be in the woods, and the next you’re at the ocean. The mixture of evergreens and ocean, ferns, moss, and mist, is just magical to me.

(OF COURSE the day I go on a trip is the one when my blog has technical problems. Last time I ever go hang out in nature. If you couldn’t access posts yesterday, sorry! The problem should be all fixed now.)