Brookings Beach and Port Orford Lighthouse

It's true, other oceans pale in comparison to the Great Pacific. Finally waves with some drama, rocks with some gravitas, and vistas with the many shades of intense blues and shining greens tickled with the whites of the spray. And the clouds buffeted inland by the afternoon winds. Really it is a joy to just stand and watch the waves come rolling in, no two alike. We have been out almost every day capturing photos for winter masterpieces and along the way have been doing a little sightseeing as well. We drove up north as far as Port Orford to see the Cape Blanco Lighthouse which we always seem to miss and we were glad we took the tour of this small lighthouse on the Westernmost Point of the continental U.S. This is also the oldest lighthouse on the coast and used to be an oil lamp fueled with pig oil and then later kerosene. But today it is one light bulb which can be seen for 24 miles out to sea.

On the way back thru Port Orford we stopped briefly to see the Sally Port, which is only one of six sally ports left in the entire world. This port is open to the ocean so all of the commercial and recreational boats have to be lifted in and out of the water for each trip.

While we are staying here in Brookings, we not only traveled north up to Port Orford, we also drove down to Crescent City for photos of the coast. We are staying, as always, at the Driftwood RV Park http://www.driftwoodrvpark.com/ and enjoy the convenience of walking across the street to the beach or the harbor. This year when we arrived we had friends already here to greet us. It's fun to meet up with Jim and Nancy and later in the evening we headed over to a local restaurant here at the harbor for some dinner. We will be meeting up with them again when we get to Charleston Marina tomorrow. This is one of the greatest things about the RV life, the friends that you make along the road. On Saturday we went to the farmers market at the harbor and got some fresh raspberries, lettuce, apricots, and shallots. We have been amazed that this year the RV Park was only half full. As was the Beach RV Park across the street. We heard that the fishing season was severely curtailed this year and it has definitely affected the rv parks in the area. But it hasn't affected the beautiful sunsets every evening as you can see from this photo of the Brookings beach one night this week.