Tag Archives: oregon

Cannon Beach Black Bunny Population

We were walking through Cannon Beach back towards our hotel when we saw a couple of black rabbits eating grass by the road. They didn’t seem easily spooked by our presence and we walked on our way. A little internet searching when we were back in the hotel explained that there is a population of black rabbits in Cannon Beach that are descended from rabbits that people have released. They are big rabbits compared to those we see around here.

I decided to grab the camera late one afternoon to see if I could get any photos of them. I didn’t have long to look but figured it was worth a try. I had walked about ten meters when I saw my first rabbits. There were a bunch of them within a block of the hotel. I saw some on an open area of grass and one that was closer to me did run away towards a bush. It them leapt up on top of the bush and stayed there chewing on the leaves. Never seen anything like that before!

Driving Across The Hills In The Snow

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Our trip to Cannon Beach got delayed a day by snow on the hills which you have to cross to get to the Oregon coastline. When we did make the crossing, not only were we properly equipped (as shall be seen in another post) but the weather was transformed. The sun was out, and it looked picturesque. The snow was still heavy on the trees and the hillsides while the road was compacted snow. Consequently, it was white everywhere. We were on a major road that would normally be traversed at speed but, due to the traction devices fitted, we were limited to 25mph. It made the crossing pretty protracted, but it did provide ample time to look around and see the scenery – and the occasional vehicle off the road!

Almost Perfect MH-60 Timing

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As we started our drive home from Oregon, we were to pass through Astoria. There is an airfield at Astoria and it is home to a Coast Guard helicopter unit that flies the MH-60T Jayhawk. I think this is one of the better-looking variants of the Black Hawk family both because of the paint job but also the configuration of external fuel tanks. I hoped we might see one there, but we had a long drive home and I wasn’t going to subject Nancy to a long delay.

Imagine my frustration as we pulled off US101 towards the airport when an MH-60 flies over our heads towards the airport a mile away. The light was great, and it looked good but I was driving and it was going to land long before we could get there. Had I blown it? Two minutes earlier and we would have been fine. I pulled up and it was taxiing towards me. I grabbed the camera and got a few shots as it headed to the Coast Guard ramp. Check out the logo of Astoria in the shape of the Jayhawk.

However, it didn’t shut down. I thought they might just be running after landing checks but Nancy asked why they hadn’t stopped everything so we waited for a while. Sure enough, another crew walked across the ramp and climbed on board. A few minutes later, they taxied back our way and then lifted. The departure route has the bridge across the Columbia River in the background and, with great winter light, it looked great. They turned down to the south and were gone. I got back in the car and we were back on the road barely ten minutes after leaving 101. I got my helicopter and Nancy didn’t have a long delay!

Haystack Rock

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Cannon Beach is well known but one of its most famous landmarks is Haystack Rock. This sits on the shore just a short distance from where we were staying so we walked by it a few times and could see it from our balcony whenever we liked. It is a sizeable thing! It sits right at the tide line so, at high tide, it is in the water but, when the tide retreats, you can walk out to it. However, it is a protected site so no climbing.

On gray and stormy days, it looks pretty bleak. When the sun is out and illuminating it with that nice low winter light angle, it looks totally different. I suspect, if I stayed there longer, I would probably photograph it a hundred different ways and still not be satisfied with what I got. I won’t be alone, of course. It has been photographed more times than anyone could count.

Fish Selection

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This post is about fish. No other reason than I was running through some shots and came across these pictures from the Ocean Coast Aquarium in Newport OR. Taking pictures of fish through thick aquarium glass is a bit of a crapshoot as the distortion can be bad and the potential for reflections is high. Since fish can be so fascinating, though, I always give it a go. Most of the shots turn out to be disappointing but a few work out. Some of the fish have happy looking faces (allowing for some anthropomorphizing) while others look sullen. You can let your imagination run riot.

Big Mouth Little Fish

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There was a tank full of sardines at the aquarium that caught my attention. This was something that was really hard to photograph but I tried anyway. The sardines were swimming quickly in shoals and they looked much as you would expect them to – a sleek, silvery fish zipping through the water. The thing that caught my eye was they way that they opened their mouths to feed. The shape of the head is narrow and clean but, when they open their mouths, flaps of skin unfold to create a huge opening allowing them to scoop up food from a far wider area. A few of the shoal would do this at any one time so you never knew where to look but they would open wide for a second or two and then close up again. It totally transformed their appearance.

Titan II Installation

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The Titan IV at Evergreen isn’t the only Titan there. They also have a Titan II ICBM. This is installed upright in a recreation of the launch facility that would originally have been buried deep under a remote part of the US countryside. You can walk down and check out the control facilities (probably a touch closer to the silo than would originally have been the case) as well as get down to the base of the silo where the twin nozzles of the missile are. Looking up at the missile from down there is quite an impressive sight.

The Titans were liquid fueled rockets. The process of getting them ready for launch was a lot more complex than for the solid fueled rockets like the Minuteman that replaced them so they were a lot less responsive. However, they fulfilled their role for a long time. They also had a secondary career as manned launchers. The Titan II was the launch vehicle for the Gemini missions so it is a lot more familiar to most people than would be the case for the average ICBM!

Skyray – Or Is It?!

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The A-4 Skyhawk had a long and illustrious career in many air forces around the world. It has a close cousin that didn’t fair so well. The Skyray shared a few design cues with the Skyhawk but it was designed as a fighter rather than an attack aircraft (although the Skyhawk spent a lot of time as an adversary fighter over the years). I find the Skyray a more attractive aircraft than the Skyhawk (not that I have anything against the Skyhawk) but that might be more about the rarity value.

I thought I had come across one parked in the parking lot of the Evergreen Aerospace Museum in McMinnville Oregon. I was surprised to find it there at all and more so to see it sitting outside. I am not sure what the future is for the jet – obviously some parts are removed for the time being – but I hope it will make it in to restoration. It certainly is worthy of a good home. That is even more true because it is not a Skyray. It is actually a Skylancer. This was a development of the Skyray that got so modified that it became a new type. It never got to production and this example was used by NASA before retirement. In this location, it is possible to get up on the earth bank behind it to get an angle that might be trickier if it ends up inside the museum.

Nozzle Details on Titan IV

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The missile display at Evergreen Aerospace Museum is impressive. They have sourced a lot of different types and they have a Titan IV section lying on its side. You can get up close to the nozzle of the rocket motor and it is a cool thing to see in detail. Looking from a distance, they look very simple but, once you are close up, the complexity of the structure and the cooling structure to stop the plume from burning right through the nozzle are really impressive. The shaping of the nozzle itself, in contrast, is very simple. The expansion ratios are calculated carefully and the profile is a smooth transition to minimize the losses. Quite the contrast.

Puffins

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In the UK, the puffin is a well recognized bird. The small body and large bill are easily identified and the coloring is pretty bright. I am struggling to think whether I have ever seen one in the wild as they live in some pretty remote places. I might have but I don’t recall it. The aquarium in Newport OR had a bunch of them though. While the coloring was a lot more subdued, there was no doubt that they were puffins given their shape.

Whether birds really have personality or not, you can imagine it with puffins. They seem to be very fussy in the way they move which is probably just a function of being quite a small bird. As they paddled around the pool and flapped their wings, we got a good look at their mannerisms. The enclosure was pretty compact so you were very close to them which allowed some good opportunities to get some shots. Seeing them out in the wild would be cooler but I don’t tend to hang around on cliff faces too often.