Just got back from the coast.... *sigh* (Eugene, Coos Bay: 2009, campground)

[Oregonbeachlover]

WONDERFUL pictures! They are great!!! Also, thanks for the book recommendation. I'll look for it on Amazon or half.com. :-)

[DreamWeavin]

nice pics. Can't wait to go there!

Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf

Picasa Web Albums - bloggity - oregon coast

OK... That link should take you to a slideshow of some of our coast pictures... the lightbulb picture is included You can stop, slow down, and modify the slideshow as you like (I think )

[ACTS Mom]

...Elf,

I love your pics of the Oregon coast -- I think the Southern Coast is our favorite place on earth! We were in Oregon last summer and spent several weeks between Port Orford, Cape Blanco and Bandon. We love Cape Blanco, and stay in the state campground there. I have about a thousand pictures that still thrill me every time I look at them.

There's also an Agate Beach out of Port Orford...spent hours upon hours out there. No huge ones, but it's like finding gold nuggets! I made earrings for my granddaughters from some of them and we have agates in bottles and special displays that my husband made. Oh, and we put them in our rock polisher and they're beautiful.

Now that you've given out your favorite agate hunting place, I guess we'll just be forced to go back out there!!

Anyway, we love your state and especially your coast! So glad you're enjoying it.

[haggardhouseelf]

I'm glad you guys liked the pictures (and that the link worked )

I just missed the Oregon beach cleanup! I just heard about it on the news. Evidently twice a year a group called SOLV organizes a huge beach cleanup. Here's the link: SOLV | Volunteer to Preserve This Treasure Called Oregon! My husband and I are making plans to attend these from now on when they happen. It looks like they happen every Fall and Spring? This is a wonderful thing...

You know the coast - at least the places we've been - has never seemed dirty or littered to me, but perhaps it is because people love this place so much and truly do what they can to keep it beautiful? When we have come across things - buckets, lightbulbs, a pair of little girls pink sunglasses... - it just, to me, adds to the mystique and beauty of the place.

The book is really interesting... I bought it on amazon, but I heard about it through a review of the book in Sunset magazine. The author became involved in a volunteer program called CoastWatch. She was given a mile-long stretch of beach to visit regularly. Her job was to report back to CoastWatch on what she saw on her visits. It sounds like a wonderful way to help the coast as well, we're checking into it: CoastWatch Home

[EnricoV]

Originally Posted by haggardhouseelf

I just missed the Oregon beach cleanup! I just heard about it on the news. Evidently twice a year a group called SOLV organizes a huge beach cleanup. Here's the link: SOLV | Volunteer to Preserve This Treasure Called Oregon! My husband and I are making plans to attend these from now on when they happen. It looks like they happen every Fall and Spring? This is a wonderful thing...

September 19th is the fall clean up date this year. It is a great, and very worthwhile, event.

[Oregonbeachlover]

Yes, the beach clean up is a wonderful thing. Also, I wanted to remind everyone that if you collect a bag of trash from the beach and bring it to the visitor's center in Lincoln City, you are eligible for the monthly drawing of a beautiful artisan Oregon glass float.

Speaking of the weirdest things found on the beach, I took this picture on my beach the morning after that terrible storm of December 2006. This was the remains of a yacht. Do you guys remember hearing about that?

[uiier]

Originally Posted by Oregonbeachlover

Yes, the beach clean up is a wonderful thing. Also, I wanted to remind everyone that if you collect a bag of trash from the beach and bring it to the visitor's center in Lincoln City, you are eligible for the monthly drawing of a beautiful artisan Oregon glass float.

Speaking of the weirdest things found on the beach, I took this picture on my beach the morning after that terrible storm of December 2006. This was the remains of a yacht. Do you guys remember hearing about that?

I haven't heard about this, what was the story behind it?? Great picture of it too!

[haggardhouseelf]

Wow! Is that what you call flotsam? Or just a derelict vessel?

In the book, she talks about "the patch" - also known as the Pacific Ocean trash vortex Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia It really makes you stop and think. 80% of the junk floating around in the patch is supposed to have come from "land-based sources" rather than from ships at sea. Trashing our oceans | Defending our Oceans

Most of the junk in the patch is said to be plastic. I used to think that recycling our plastic stuff was the best that we could do. But then started learning that a lot of the plastic trash that we had isn't recyclable, and of the stuff that is recyclable, the energy required to recycle it was really great. The best thing now that we think we can do is to reduce as much as we can the amount of plastic anything that we buy. We've been reusing containers and buying lots more things in bulk and switching to glass as much as we can. We no longer use plastic bags and we reuse travel mugs when we get coffee to-go and things like that. One of the hardest things I've found is buying toothbrushes and school supplies. We save and reuse a lot of our school supplies from previous years, but still every year there are things we still have to buy - more PVC, more trash/packaging waste, more plastic...

I should probably take this to a different thread somewhere? Sorry if I've gone a bit off-topic.

[Oregonbeachlover]

Originally Posted by uiier

I haven't heard about this, what was the story behind it?? Great picture of it too!

I didn't know the story when I was snapping the pix, but what we heard later was that it was a new yacht, being sailed from south Africa to its new owners in Seattle. The last part of the journey was from SF to Seattle, with 3 seasoned sailors onboard. My husband, being a boat lover, looked up all the info on the yacht and it was a very expensive one! I found other debris from it, like table tops and bench pieces, on the beach that day. They were exactly what the info pictures on that model of yacht were, which my husband found in his research. It makes no sense to us that they would've sailed it when they did, because we were warned many days ahead of time, by the weather forecasters, about how bad the approaching storm was going to be.

[haggardhouseelf]

I hope that the three sailors were OK?