Another repeat of a previous theme. Water flowing over the sand on a beach creates some interesting patterns. The sand on Cannon Beach included a lot of very dark grains. These made the visualization of the movement of the sand easy to do. It also allowed you to see where the water was flowing deeper or shallower which helped when walking through the water running across the beach.
Walking along the beach at Tofino, you see some interesting patterns in the sand. He movement of water across the sand causes various ridges in the surface. There is also water draining down the beach from the land behind the beach. This water gathers behind the ridges but ultimately needs to drain further. When it finds a weak spot, it cuts through the ridge. Once it does so, the water all flows through this breach and it starts to take some sand with it. It expands the cut and then deposits the sand further down as it slows down again. This can result in some cool formations in the sand.
Cannon Beach was quite a way north of where we were staying in Oregon. However, it was on our route home so we stopped off to wander along the sands for a bit prior to hunting down some lunch. We were not the only ones enjoying a sunny day on the beach but, given the expanse of sand available, there was plenty of space for everyone to spread out so it wasn’t crowded.
The huge flat sands were most impressive and the rocks that sit out in the water look very cool. It is hard to gauge their scale when they are out like that as they are so separated from the people that you don’t have enough of a reference to work with. It is safe to say that they are pretty big though. There was a bit of sea spray in the air which made everything take on a slightly more misty look when you were looking south towards the sun. Looking north this was a lot less apparent. I could see why a landscape photographer would come here to spend some time in the early and late hours.
We did a bit of a road trip while in Oregon. I was interested in seeing Bandon Beach again – we went there about ten years before but I didn’t remember much about it – and it was a couple of hours down the coast but we had a day when the weather was forecast to start out average and get better. Therefore, a road trip seemed like a good idea. It was quite fun seeing the different scenery as we headed down the coast but, after a while, the highway moved inland and we were getting a different type of view (or none at all for some parts of it).
We got to Bandon and checked out the view from different parts of the coastline. However, while the light was pretty good, I had not anticipated just how windy it was going to be. As I stood on the overlook checking out the beach, I was getting absolutely pummeled by the wind. It was hard to stand upright let alone hold the camera steady. Of course, if the picture ends up being sharp, there is nothing in it that would indicate how the conditions were.
Bandon is like a lot of the Oregon coastline in that it has large rock stacks sitting on or just off the beach. These make the area rather popular with landscape photographers. An early morning start and the use of tripods and strong neutral density filters is going to be pretty common here I would imagine. That was not what I was here for. I didn’t even venture down to the beach. Given how hard the wind was blowing, it didn’t seem like it would be the relaxing beach stroll that I would have liked so I was content to enjoy the view from up on the bluffs. Besides, we had the drive back to consider as well.