A beach-ful interlude

We drove early in the morning to Tillamook Sunday - my daughter has an oceanography class and the field trip was (naturally) out at the ocean... What an amazing day of perfect weather, warmer than most days in the summertime, clear and breezy and sparkling with autumn color among the trees.

There was almost no traffic at all as we went through the mountains, the quietest we'd ever seen it, and we were stunned into silence more than once by spinning clouds of golden leaves, the trees arching over the road to create green-gold archways of light among the morning mist. An elk trotted out onto the road in front of us, thankfully enough ahead we were easily able to stop and admire him, he had a moderate rack, so graceful, something from another world, a poetic one. Four of them, there were, spinning around and slipping back into the trees.

Tillamook proper has always struck me as a rather clunky and worn looking town, smelling of cows - but going west out on to the water, it's another world. The bay was filled with the rustle of sea-grasses, creeping strawberry, soft sand and bits of pale driftwood. The class measured sand, listened to lectures, sketched. We walked the quiet beach and marveled at the sand-pipers, egrets, the warmth and peace.

Didn't know we would have to provide transport for this trip, but wouldn't have missed it for the world.