Hey All,
I just got back from Oregon yesterday, where I went down for some paddling with Mike Northrop. It ended up being an awesome weekend, with a sweet paddle on the Clackamas River on Saturday and then some great surf on Sunday. I haven't been to the Oregon Coast in years, and I guess that I had forgotten how strikingly beautiful it is out there--with long sandy beaches seperated by huge windworn rocks. Regrettably, Mike's digital camera isn't arriving until Santa makes his rounds, so we have no pictures to show for our adventures, but it was a great time nonetheless.
On Friday, I left work early and made the drive down from Seattle to Mike's house in Lake Oswego, which is a beautiful suburb of Portland. Mike's friend Brett Elliott was playing for the Division III national championship on Saturday morning, so we got to the river pretty late, after a morning of drinking mimosas and watching football with Mike's buddies.
The Clackamas is a beautiful river. It runs through a canyon which is in a valley between two sizeable peaks. The drive out there was amazing--we could see Mt. Adams and Mt. Hood. It felt great to escape the drizzle of Seattle and see the sun. We were joined on the river by Mike's dad, David. We put in at Sunstrip, and had an awesome afternoon paddling down the mostly class III-ish river. There was some fun play throughout the river, and then a big hole at the bottom where a ton of boaters were doing park-and-play. The hole at the bottom, Bob's Hole, was pretty big at this level, and a lot of paddlers were throwing down.
After we got off the river and back to Mike's house, we grabbed a quick snack and then headed out for Mike's beach house, which is near Pacific City, OR with the bed of his truck filled with kayaks, paintball guns, and a dog crate. We occupied the cab of the vehicle, along with an excited 5 month old weimeraner named Luna. It was about a two-hour drive to Mike's house in Pacific City, and once we got there we had a good dinner and then checked out the Sportsman's Pub and Grub, a fine Pacific City establishment. We stayed long enough, and consumed enough drinks, that eventually the man who claimed to be the owner of the bar, "Dad", bought us a round before we headed back to the house and crashed for the night.
The next day, we lazed around for awhile before heading out to Cape Kiwanda and checking out the surf. It was supposed to be improving throughout the day, so we took Luna for a walk along a huge rocky outcropping that juts out into the ocean. Down below us, probably 60 or 70 feet, we could see the surfers catching some nice 5 and 6 foot waves, and then out into the expanse of the Pacific. The day was surprisingly clear, and except for Luna's constant attempts to give us a heart attack by standing close to the edge of the cliff, the day was really perfect.
We headed down to the beach and put Luna in the bed of the truck, and then checked out the waves for a few hours. They were super fun--clean, not-too-big, and the water was actually warm compared to the Clackamas. The only drawback was that there were alot of surfers who were already out there. It felt so good to be in the ocean though, and to see the sun, and remember (it seems so often that we forget) that a cold gray December in Seattle isn't a cold gray December throughout the world. I think that maybe I'll just pack up and head for Baja Mexico. I probably won't do that, because I still have hopes that ski season may start, but I think that I will definetely be back to Pacific City Oregon sometime this winter, where I will do nothing but kayak, stare out across the water, and hang out with "Dad" at the Sportsman's Pub and Grub.
The next morning I headed back up to Seattle, and now I'm back at my job, thinking about my last two weeks of work, and hoping for some well undeserved free time this winter.
