Month: August 2026

Discovering the Beauty of Oregon’s Oswald West State Park

Although I would have been happy just walking the beach in front of rental every day we were there, the rest of the group wanted to hike in Oswald West State Park, which was just a few miles down the road.

Once we started walking the old-growth trail to the beach I was glad they had persuaded me to come. It reminded me a lot of the rain forests of Olympic National Park.

Here life and death are irrevocably linked, death giving birth to life timelessly.

The end of the forested trail opens up an impressive cove

and sea caves

It was impossible not to be impressed by this magnificent cove, much larger than the small cove by our rental, but the downside was that it also attracted too many people for my taste, as evidenced by the overflowing parking lots at the trailhead.

Back to the Oregon Coast

Although we haven’t vacationed on the Oregon Coast for the last few years, I’ve visited it regularly since 1967. So, when Jen asked us if we’d like to join her at Arch Cape for a week at the beach, I quickly agreed, especially since we would be joining Logan and Hannah. Arch Cape is just a few miles south of Cannon Beach, a tourist destination I used to visit regularly when I lived in Vancouver.

I’m not sure I’ve ever walked the beach at Arch Cape before, but it certainly has all the characteristics I identify with the Oregon Coast, like these rocky headlands with sea caves.

If I was willing to jump/wade a few streams, I could walk a mile and a half to an even more impressive outcropping and cave.

One day when we hiked this the tide was way out, and it was possible to walk around the headlands all the way to Cannon Beach.

Luckily, at 84 I had better sense than to try that and settled with examining the small tide pools at the base of the outcropping and turning back.

We did a very different hike on another day — hiking an old-growth forest at Oswald West State Park — but I hiked this beach four days of the five days we were there and felt better every day I hiked it. It’s almost as if the ocean’s ebb and flow is Nature’s way of putting us in touch with our Chi.