When we first visited the Southern Oregon Coast, we stayed at Whaleshead Resort. It's north of Brookings. We stayed in Modular Cabin #9. Beautiful view of the bay. And we had a view of the rock with a spout!! I even drew it in the Visitors book - so the next ones would know where to look. We fell in love. And we started hiking Whaleshead Beach as often as we could.
One day, a year or so later, we were breakfasting at Mattie's Pancake House, we overheard a lady say that she rents a condo in Rainbow Rock every summer. You can rent there??? From then on, we vacationed at Rainbow Rock in Toby's Crab Shack condo. We fell in love again with the alcove overlooking the ocean.
Even when we retired and moved to Newport, we came down to Toby's Crab Shack for mini-vacations. In fact, we were turning in our keys after a visit, and Rick said, "we'd sure like to live at RR." And, lo and behold, there was going to be an opening in January!! We looked at the unit and said, we want it!!!
We loved our 10 years there. Hated to leave Rainbow Rock, but we were able to find another rental in Brookings - we really don't want to leave Brookings until we have to. (Deal is, if we have monthly dr appts in the valley - we move.) That threat hanging over our heads helps us make healthy choices - most of the time!
Now we rent a little house in Harris Hts, no ocean view but we try to walk the beaches as often as we can. Today was one of those days!
I had heard the road down to the Whaleshead Beach was in terrible shape. So we parked our car in the small parking lot at the top of the road. And we walked gingerly down the gravel / sand road. It WAS in pretty bad shape!
Reminder, we're 71 - almost 72 years young! Made it down the road - next challenge - the vegetation is taking over the picnic tables and paths!! That made getting to the beach an adventure in itself!!
But worth it!! The spout was spouting! It used to be a lot pickier - no spouts in low or high tide. Apparently, not the case nowadays. Hooray! We crossed the creek and headed down the beach.
Happy to say we saw purple star fish - they were the first starfish to disappear because of a blight. Nice to see them back.
The sun was fighting with the mist? fog? but I walked over to the opening that used to have a waterfall coming thru. Small stream was still flowing - guess we're drier than we thought we were.
The walk back up the trail and road was longer than we remembered!! Isn't that always the case? We prevailed and reached the car. Hope we get to go back again - we'll see how we feel tomorrow. BUT for now, I'll live on the memories of our favorite beach - past and today.
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