Cape Kiwanda, Netarts Bay & Cape Meares

We got up and got going fairly early this morning. We were out the door by 9:39. First stop was the bakery on the corner and I picked up some fresh made bagels. Not exactly bagel shaped but very good.  I ate the jalapeño cheese for breakfast and Len had a plain one. We got two more to make sandwiches with tomorrow.  I said that I would take a better picture of the haystack rock and Cape Kiwanda. I also took a panoramic of the area.  You can see that there is quite a lot of sand and the the Cape seems to be one big sand dune.  The local market rents sand boards that are like snow boards for people to board down the sand. Last week when we had the snow storm, the cape was completely covered and someone actually walked up it and actually downhill skied on it. 

This is my panoramic view of the area, got to love the iPhone. 

As you can see the weather started out pretty nice this morning so we decided to head up the capes to Netarts Bay.  You can see from the next picture the bay is on the right and the ocean is on the left.

The bay has a few businesses on it, Jacobsen Sea Salt, which takes water from the bay and dries is down and sells it commercially. There is also an oyster farm and a fish hatchery.  There are also quite a few dairy farms in the area.  They also do quite a bit of crabbing in the area.  There are a number of places to rent boats and traps.  We made it to Oceanside again to explore the beach.  The tide was coming in so not as much beach but we did manage to get about 1/2 bucket each of some very interesting rocks and Lukie got to run around and wear off some energy.

Since the weather was still pretty good we decided to head up to the end of the road to the Cape Meares Lighthouse.  This lighthouse stands 217 ft above the ocean but the lighthouse itself is only 38 ft tall making it the shortest lighthouse on the Oregon coast. It was built in 1890 and decommissioned in 1963.  It was closed but it is open in the summer time for tours. 

There is also a backside view of the three arches that you can see from Oceanside.