Oregon camping, a spit walk

June, 2021

No, no, no … we’re not going to spit while we walk. No spitting involved here. You might remember that last year (2020) I took you on my walk out to the Dungeness Spit and I told you we wouldn’t be spitting on that spit walk either. But maybe you’ve forgotten, and maybe you thought that today you would be spitting on this walk. Sigh, it’s so difficult to communitcate clearly sometimes, isn’t it? 🙂

What we are going to do today is go for a gorgeous sunny beach walk on a spit that’s just inside, immediately inside, the Columbia River bar. Here … let me show you where I went …

The RED ARROW points to the spit that I’ll be walking around. The RED STAR is where I’m camped. The LIGHT GREEN line is the shipping channel for big ships coming into the Columbia River. The straight WHITE LINE is the Astoria-Megler bridge … you can see how amazingly close to Astoria those big ships come.

Originally, I had wanted to hike out the very long skinny rip-rap breakwater/jetty that juts out into the Pacific Ocean, to the west of the “spit with the RED ARROW”, directly west of it. But that long skinny jetty was closed, fenced-off, due to construction work there. But the sandy spit that I did walk around was wonderful!

I drove from the campground up to a parking area near the spit and walked through the trees out to the beach. [click on photos to enlarge them]

Ah, my first view of the water (below) … and bright sunshine! I’m on the south side of the spit for this first view. I don’t know what the concrete structures were originally, maybe part of the military stuff of Fort Stevens. Today they are used simply by people just to get in out of the rain, and they have photos attached to the inner wall of birds that are commonly found in the area.

I headed out to the beach!

 

 

 

Photo above … looking back at that concrete structure.

But the beach and a slight breeze and the warm sunshine were what called to me …

 

 

 

Oh, look at the bird in the grass.

Ah, ha! We know who this is. 🙂

Little Towhee enjoyed the beach too.

 

 

 

 

“Yikes!” shouted Little Towhee … and we moved on in a hurry.

The photo above is looking east, with the entire Astoria-Megler bridge in the photo. Astoria (Oregon) is on the right; Megler (Washington) is on the left. The four large WHITE dots are not part of the bridge … they are ocean ships anchored in the Columbia River.

The photo below is a zoomed in shot of the tallest portion of the bridge, where the ships pass close to Astoria on their way up/down river from/to the Pacific Ocean.

 

As I walked around to the north side of the spit, this barge came into view. The landing area and the pilings that keep the barge from being swept out to sea are temporary during the construction mentioned above at the very first of this blog post.

That long skinny rip-rap breakwater/jetty that juts out into the ocean is actually huge. The US Army Corps of Engineers have built a railway line on top of it. Yes, the jetty that juts out into the ocean on the west side of this spit/peninsula is that wide and that big. The railway is being used to take gynormous pieces of rock out to rebuild, to shore up the sides and the end of that breakwater/jetty. This work is done every few decades or the breakwater would simply wash away because of the force of the ocean. Originally, that breakwater/jetty was 6.5 miles long. As of 2018, the breakwater was about 2.8 miles long, and had lost about 70% of its width as well. As of 2018, the widest spot at water/ocean level was about 80 feet, when it should be twice that. Construction is expected to be completed by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2023, and they will remove the railway when they are done. Maybe on my next camping trip here, I can walk partway out that breakwater/jetty and show you.

These barges were bringing zillions of tons of rock here for this construction/repair to the south jetty at the mouth of the Columbia.

That was interesting, but still, I was so enamored of the beach and the birds and the fresh breeze and the sunshine and the peace, the sounds of the water and the bird calls.

Help me here. I don’t know what the bird is in the photo above. My best guess based on internet searches is that it is a Caspian Tern … the largest tern in the world and “found all over the world” according to the internet. But I swear, in all of my 73 years of life here in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve never seen one. It is a handsome bird!

Now this fellow above is well known to me, that’s for sure. I don’t know which variety of seagull he is, but he’s a local fellow for sure.

And these folks (above) are also very well known hereabouts. Canada Geese. These four were swimming slowly and sedately along the shore of the beach around the spit. I could almost hear the chit-chat as they looked at me and wondered what manner of species I was.

The photo below is of a rather small plant growing right up out of the sand. There were lots of them here. So pretty.

 

And then there was … just the sand all by itself. The breeze creates these tiny ripples or ridges, maybe like waves are created? Tho I think waves are created by underwater currents and the land masses below the surface, yes? Tho maybe by wind too.

And then I came to the end of my walk around the spit and headed back to the big white truck. The world is so beautiful.