Yesterday we hiked around the Cape Blanco State Park. The park is located about seven miles north of Port Orford, Oregon. The park is quiet and secluded and the paved sites are laid out in such a way that allow for privacy.

A short walk behind our site into the forest is the Oregon Coast Trail. This trail runs from the Columbia River all the way to the California border. We hiked south down the trail and followed it to the beach access. The park is on a bluff over 200 feet above sea level. The hike down a paved road to beach wasn’t excessively steep. The pitch steepened somewhat over the last 50 yards though.

Beach south of the lighthouse

The sandy beach is long and littered with driftwood near the cliffs. It was windy and a bit chilly.

Donna checking out the driftwood

Donna claiming the secluded south beach as her own

After we hiked back and ate lunch, we followed the trail to the north. Our destination was the Cape Blanco Lighthouse. The trail comes out of the forest onto a brushy bluff. While we walked along the trail cut through the dense bushes, I saw a red fox. He appeared to be hunting mice. Foxes have keen hearing and can pinpoint the location of a mouse by the sound of it rustling through the grass. They will jump high and come down on  the mouse, pinning it with  their front paws. This is what I saw the fox do. He disappeared in the brush but emerged a few seconds later. He climbed up on a rock and looked back at us. Then he disappeared again.

We continued our hike and made our way to the lighthouse. You can take a guided tour, which includes climbing the 64 steps up the tower to the light for two dollars per person. We took the tour. The spiral steps are steep. The last section of steps is like climbing a ladder. The lighthouse was completed in 1870. Three years earlier, the decision was made to build it due to the hazardous reefs and rocky islands that are in the area.

View south from the lighthouse entrance

The bricks the tower was built from were made onsite. It was cheaper to hire a brickmaker and source materials locally than it was to have them shipped from San Francisco. Twenty thousand bricks were needed.

Cape Blanco Lighthouse

The focal height of the light is 257 feet above sea level. It can be seen more than 20 miles out to sea. The current fresnel lens was installed in 1936, replacing the original. I tried to take photos of the lens, but without a wide-angle camera lens, I  couldn’t capture all of it.

1,000-watt bulb inside the fresnel lens

The weather here changes constantly. Yesterday we had fog and light mist in the morning. The day was overcast most of the time, but the sun would break through for short periods. When we were out on the point near the lighthouse, we could see blue sky to the north and east while we had low, dense clouds directly above.

View to the north from the lighthouse entrance

When we hiked through the forest, we were quite warm. As soon as we stepped out onto the open bluff or beach, the wind chilled us quickly. This place is hard to describe or imagine. You simply must come here.

Today, I think we’ll pull out at lunch time and head down to the giant redwoods across the California border.