Sun! Sun

Glory of glories, the sun came out this weekend, first time in, like, eighteen years or so! We piled into the camper and went to the coast. Enjoyed it so much we almost didn't come home. Stayed an extra day.

There's a little park we like, near Tillamook, we went there. Ranger said they lost three hundred trees during the December storms. Still a lot of them piled up all over the campground, a lot of the survivors showing scars where big branches had been torn or shorn off.

The beach, normally reached by a short hike and down a little bluff, was another testament to Mother Nature's fury. Getting to the sand was a problem -- so much driftwood, ranging in size from pieces as big around as my little finger to pieces bigger around than me and forty or fifty feet long, had piled up so high and thick that it was impossible for stubby-legged dogs to negotiate. (Or somebody carrying a couple a couple stubby-legged dogs and worried about shifting underfoot to negotiate ...)

The swatch was forty or fifty feet wide in spots and laid up against the bluff as far as you could see. Enough to build a small village just in the stretch of half a mile or so where we were. We finally found a gap, but it wasn't easy. The image of me and the dogs gives you an idea -- that green in the background is the top of the bluff, and last time we were there, there was nothing between where I stood and that, save sand.

Makes you realize that if you'd been on that beach come the storm, you'd have stood a real good chance of being crushed ...