Tag Archives: beach

Not Sure This Bunker Would Have Survived

Perched above the beach at Lepe in Hampshire, overlooking the Solent, is an old bunker. It is surrounded by fencing and there is signage about the purpose of the bunker. You can see the hatch to access the bunker as well as some of the vents for the space below. I’m not sure what the bunker was designed to survive. It is close to a huge oil refinery and close to the headquarters of the Royal Navy. In a shooting war, there would have been some large detonations nearby. I doubt it would have provided sufficient protection to its occupants.

Beach Driftwood

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Wood on the shoreline is usually pretty interesting from a texture perspective. Spending a bunch of time in the water getting beaten by waves and any other debris in the water tends to smooth out the surfaces and also emphasize the flaws in the structure of the wood. I saw a bunch of wood on the beach at Shoreline when walking along the shore there and one in particular caught my eye.

Tranquility By the Shore

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The walk along the beach in Deception Pass State Park starts out in amongst a lot of people. The West Beach near the parking lot had a lot of people enjoying themselves while we were there. However, they didn’t want to go too far it seemed as, when we started walking along the shoreline towards the North Beach, we rapidly found ourselves a lot more isolated. There was the occasional person passing the other way but we were, for the most part, on our own. Standing on the shore and looking out across the water on a sunny afternoon was really relaxing.

Beaches in the Mist

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The moisture in the air along the Oregon coast can catch you out at times. On one drive south out of Yachats we rounded a bend in the road where we looked down from quite a height along the beaches stretched beneath us. It looked most impressive, but we were then on the way down a twisty road and had missed the pull off. I made a note to come back another time. This I did but the conditions had changed a lot. There was now a lot more mist in the air and the beaches were disappearing into the glare from the sun. Even so, it was still a very pretty location.

Yaquina Head Lighthouse

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Yaquina Head got two visits from us during our stay in Oregon. We were in Newport on one of our early days and headed up to see it. Shortly after paying to get in to the park, the rain started to come down. I did a quick recce of the place but rapidly became more interested in the interior of a warm car (which Nancy had wisely elected not to leave in the first place). The entry was good for a few days so, with better weather forecast for later in the week, we decided to come back.

The weather dutifully obeyed and improved and we returned on our next trip to Newport. When its not raining, things definitely take on a more appealing feel. We wandered up to the lighthouse and took a look around it and out to see where some gray whales were passing by, if a little distant and happy to stay below the surface most of the time.

From the headland, there were stairs down to the beach which, when the tide was out (as it was while we were there), revealed a lot of rocky tidepools. People were encouraged to explore the tidepools to see the wildlife that is within. You could go quite a way across them but, given the number of creatures that were clinging to the rock surfaces, I was a bit reluctant to go trampling across them. Instead, I maneuvered around on the edges where I could avoid crushing some poor creature.

Plenty of things were living in the pools. While the crustaceans were everywhere, I was particularly drawn to the anemones. The way in which they close up when out of the water, keep themselves damp internally and then open up once they are back under water is impressive. They are also so varied in their colors. They are quite the interesting creature.

Inquisitive Sealion at the Beach

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The shores of Puget Sound provide plenty of places to explore. One of these was a beach in Shoreline, a town that is quite appropriately named. I was actually about to head back to the car when this event occurred. As I walked up the path I saw people coming in the opposite direction. I thought they had a dog with them and that it was swimming in the water alongside them. Then I realized that the head in the water was not a dog but instead was a sealion.

The sealion was very close in to the shore and seemed to be quite interested in what was going on. I turned back around and headed to the water as it came closer. There were some old wood pilings in the water and the sealion came in to those, almost as if they provided a measure of protection. Then it paused before turning around and swimming back in the other direction. Shortly thereafter, it dipped under the surface and swam away. By this point, a few people had stopped to watch its progress. A sealion is hardly a rarity but it is interesting just how much attention it garners all the same.

Sutro Heights

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A weekend day had us over in San Francisco having a mooch around some places we haven’t visited before. I had been reading something online about Sutro Heights and wanted to check the place out. This is an overlook up on the cliffs that had been the home of a guy called (unsurprisingly) Sutro. He had built a large house on this land and added gardens around it that included statues and artworks that were available for people to visit.

The house is long demolished but the gardens have become a city park. We stopped off to look around, enjoy the view and use the place as somewhere to have our lunch. The view down to the beach below, while rather hazy when we were there, was still rather nice. You could see plenty of people having fun down on the sands. The gardens themselves were rather relaxing. You could climb up onto the area where the house had once stood and try to imagine what it had been like. A few signs included images of how things had been laid out. Given how close we were to the Cliff House, the baths and the trails, it was a little surprising how few people were there. However, it isn’t heavily signed so maybe it is easily missed. If I hadn’t read about it, we would probably never have known either.

Sunset on Big Island

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Gratuitous sunset shots are not usually my thing. However, where we were staying on Big Island provided a great place to watch the sun go down. It was easy to have the sun go down in line with a little headland by the beach so why wouldn’t I do that? I watched a couple of the sunsets from there. The sky was better for one of them but there wasn’t a lot of high level cloud to really light up.

It’s interesting to see how many people that came out for the sunset disappeared right after the sun went down. They missed some of the more lovely sky colors that resulted as the sun illuminated the clouds from below once it had passed beyond the horizon. A little patience is worthwhile, although it doesn’t seem like such a sacrifice for a photo when you are standing by a tropical beach.

The Secret Beach

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Being lucky is so cool. I don’t know how many excellent opportunities I have missed without realizing it (that’s the benefit of not realizing it), but I have been fortunate to stumble into some good stuff. We were driving down towards Hilo when we came to an overlook above a bay. We pulled over and walked up to the edge to see a great view down into a lovely looking bay. The waves were crashing in from the ocean and the place looked cool. We were so close to moving on after a few minutes.

Just before we turned to go, we saw a couple of people down on a headland in the bay. We weren’t in a hurry so we figured we would head down the trail and see what was there. The area was butted up against a botanic garden which we weren’t planning on visiting so we knew we wouldn’t go far. As we got to the bottom of the trail, we came to an entrance to the garden with a security guard sitting watch over who came through. Then we saw a small side track alongside the fence heading to the water. A short excursion brought us to a beach. The waves were crashing up on the shore by our feet and everything was covered over with a dense canopy of trees. A little climb took me out onto a spur of rock with the waves crashing either side. A rocky cliff face was on one side and the waves were striking it violently.

There was a small blowhole in the rock near where I stood. As the waves came in just right, the water would fire out of the hole. Other times nothing would happen or there would be a small gurgle. I talked to a couple of guys out there who obviously knew the place well. They pointed out how far out you could go without getting completely drenched by the waves. More importantly, it looked like the sort of place that you could get caught out by a wave easily. If you went into the water, I suspect it could have ended badly.

Forget that though. The place was gorgeous. When the guys left, we were the only ones there. The waves were pounding the shore, the scenery was stunning and you felt like you were the only person in the world who knew it was there. It was hard to break away. We stood there for ages. Sometimes the waves would come that bit further up the beach than normal and they would wash over my feet. No point in objecting. Just stand there and enjoy it. Of course, we had to leave eventually. Those visiting the botanic garden had a promontory a short distance away but they were really not in a good position to enjoy the experience because they were on one of the nicer parts. We met a couple coming down the trail as we left. They looked ready to turn back and had not seen where we had gone. We made sure to explain where they needed to go. I hope they liked it.

Turtles at Rest

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The reef by our hotel was home to some green turtles. They seemed to have developed a good schedule. Morning was feeding time. They would go out on the reef and spend their time nibbling away at the plant life growing on the rocks and coral. By early afternoon they would have pulled themselves up onto the beach in an area the hotel had fenced off to keep people away. There they would sleep all afternoon and into the night. Come by during the afternoon and you could see them. In the evening, lights on the beach would be switched on and you could still make them out a little way above the waterline.

No pictures from me of them in action. I saw plenty of them while snorkeling on the reef and sometimes they would come and check me out. You are meant to avoid disturbing them but when they come after you, it is hardly your fault. However, I did kill my GoPro while out snorkeling so the photo opportunities were lost and will have to remain as memories. Shots of them on the beach were a lot easier though so that is what we have here.