Gold fills the air: Exceptional evening light and sunset at the Peter Iredale on an Oregon beach

The Wreck of the Peter Iredale at Sunset

Click on any of the photos to go to the album.

I almost missed this gorgeous evening light. It was raining and dreary, and I went shopping at Freddy's before going to the gym. Freddy's took longer than I thought, and the gym was closing. I hadn't been to the beach in awhile, so despite the rain and grayness of the day, I went. I was going to snap a couple of pix and go home, but the "new" batteries I'd put in my camera were not new, but very, very dead. I drove to the corner store on the highway and got new ones. Then I drove over to Hammond (another post) and took a few pix in the drizzle and fading gray light. Time to go home. But I saw to the west that the sun had broken through the clouds in a sliver of brilliant light, so I thought there could be something worth taking pictures of at the beach. Hoping for a nice sunset, I looped around once more and drive out to the Peter Iredale. Oh, my. I'm so glad I did. The air was filled with golden light, and I was in time to see the change of colors through an amzing spectrum. Not only that, but the rainbow on the landward side of the scene was a complete arc, growing stronger by the minute and then becoming a double rainbow - and what did I see perched on a pole in the midst of the rainbow? A bald eagle. I got his photo before he flew into the rainshine. In the album there's a photo of the rainbow's top curve, too.

The colors on the landward side of the hillock were rich and muted like a Romantic era painting.

Here's the bald eagle. At times like this, I wish I had good long lens, but that day will come.

The eagle flew off into the golden light.

The colors on the beach were muted, breathtaking and constantly changing. You can see Tillamook Head in the distance.

I didn't tweak this in PhotoShop except to boost the contrast the smallest trifle. This is how the camera saw the color of the sun's light diffused in the air. It was still sprinkling a little, and the air was wet and the slightest bit misty. I love the rows and rows of waves on our flat beach.

I took a lot of pictures this evening. Click on any photo to go the web album, and you can see the slide show or flip through the album of rainbow and Peter Iredale photos. I'm sure glad I didn't miss this evening at the beach!

The wreck of the Peter Iredale on the beach in Warrenton, Oregon

I took this photo on July 23, although I'll use it for today's post. It's a nice one! I didn't mess with the color or any of the settings in photoshop. All I did was re-size it. It's been a cool year at the beach - cool as in almost cold. My Astoria dress code this year is a jacket and shorts.

I've been working a lot on our new web site. It has the awkward name of TPF's Animal Jewelry ~ Hand-Painted Animal Pins, at least for now. I launched it last week and I'm trying to raise its rank in the searches. Actually, for certain targeted searches, it's already coming up very well. It's been fun to do. It's a new format for me, with a data-driven system which makes uploading products a lot faster than in the existing gift shop. We have so many of these beautiful pins that I wanted to get them ALL online, not just a fraction of the inventory, and this is working. I still have a couple hundred (?) to do, and it's going well. I bought the site from myself in my new Market America venture, so it was also inexpensive - a big plus!

It seems there's been a lot of time spent on the phone with technical support and big companies for various reasons lately, and it's eaten up the time that I usually spend working on the web sites and blogs. I've been taking a lot of photos, as always, but not posting them. The great thing about digital photos is, I can store them on my hard drive and go back and find the date of the ones I want to post. I still intend to keep this particular blog as my journal, and I'll continue to update and back date as I can. Along with my my web site, it's becoming my home on the web. The blog is faster and more spontaneous. I still love the web site and feel that I have about the right balance between that and the blogs. Of course, I have the tapirs and gift shop on the web site, but I'll keep developing pages such as my photos section. Regarding blogs, I started too many of them when I was getting started, and pared them down in number with experience. I think it's about right now.

Yesterday I started something new. I had not wanted to take the time to get into social networking, although I knew it would be fun, but when my friend and tapir colleague, Sergio, invited me into Facebook, I got hooked. I found more tapir friends and colleagues there, and a few of non-tapir friends. I can see where this could take up a lot of time, but it's fun. I just took a movie quiz. Wish they would list more that I was interested in!

And one more thing. Soon the Transitions class that Sue and I are teaching will be completed. It's our first and we're looking forward to starting our next. We're just getting the flyers together and will start planning the class. It's been rewarding for sure, both taking and teaching, watching ourselves and other people begin to feel better than we have in years! I'll try to keep updating here!

One MORE thing. I finally downloaded IE 7 and am getting used to it. So, why am I not using Firefox? I can't seem to integrate Notepad for editing HTML for one thing, and for another thing, QuickBooks has to have IE in order to work. Who knew??? So that's more of my techno-time taken up this week. IE 6 finally crashed and I couldn't bring it all the way back up to speed. The blog spacing works differently in IE7, so let's see what I have to do to fix it.

Sweatshirts on the Beach

It was goreously sunny at the beach on Oregon's North Coast, but Lee added one more sweatshirt to the two he was already wearing. I was in my winter jacket, and was none too warm. He'd left his jacket in Bend and come back to the Coast in shorts a couple of weeks ago because we had a day or two of teaser warm weather. Actually, the teaser warm weather was in Bend. When he arrived in shorts, the rest of us here were freezing.

The wreck of the Peter Iredale - a local landmark - and a lot of people in sweats.

Lee gives a boost to someone's Spiderman kite.

Scenic and mellow. Typical Oregon beach. Fantastic.

The Peter Iredale lies like the bones of a monster snake

The wreck of the Peter Iredale on the beach at Warrenton, Oregon. Obviously, an incredibly beautiful day. I've got more pix of the Peter Iredale on this blog and in one of my web albums.

July 6: Being tourists in Astoria

When my brother and Beth came up from Cottage Grove for the day, the weather turned out to be much nicer than it had been for the celebration on the 4th. We did some of the tourist things. I'd learned enough to show them a few places, and we did some things I hadn't done before, either. Our first trip was out to the beach to see the wreck of the Peter Iredale - scenic and compelling as always.

This is a part of the ship further back from the bow. It's probably the mainmast housing.

Next we went up to see the Astoria Column with its spectacular view over the Columbia River and surrounding countryside.

I love the purple foxgloves, and I still can't get over the amazing array of green things and shades of green in Oregon.

The column shows the history of our area in pictures and words.

It sure does climb way up there into the sky. There's a door at the bottom, and you can walk all the way up the spiral staircase.

In case you wonder where you are, there's a bronze map at the base of the column.

I wonder what's in here. Maybe some floppy disks? I hope there will be a way to read them. Maybe some 35mm film capsules?

Here's the view on the other side of the column from the river. The tallest mountain on the left is called Saddle Mountain. It has lots fo bumps and . . . a saddle :) That's Youngs River, and no, they don't use an apostrophe.

Here we are down by the river again, just west of the Maritime Museum. The old pilings and foundation are picturesque, and sometimes there are ships in the dock.

The Columbia Light Ship is in the dock permanently. The Queen of the West (I think that's the name) is a paddlewheel boat that comes down the Columbia just this far bringing tourists.

They're expanding the museum. See the trolley tracks in the foreground? You can ride for one dollar, and that's what we're going to do.

This is one of the sights out the trolley window - the old cannery building called "Big Red." It's privately owned. You can't go through it - darn! I can only imagine!

I don't know the guy. I thought the inside of the old refurbished trolley was pretty cool. And when you get to the end of the line, the seats can be flipped so everyone is once again facing the way the trolley is moving. I like that!

Here's another pic of the inside of the trolley. It was wonderful having Gary and Beth come visit. Why is it that I never take photos of people? I guess it's because I don't like being the subject myself.

Discovering my new world: 1. On the beach with the Peter Iredale; 2. Astoria's waterfront

I didn't take any pictures on moving day (June 12). Now I'd probably take dozens, but the digital was still new, the cards were small, and I was still pretty stressed, tired, and focused on getting the job done and returning the truck so it didn't cost me another day. On the 13th, Kate and I took the truck the hour's drive back to Longview and we were finally free of the hulking thing that kept getting us into trouble. Of course, it had also gotten us here, which was a total relief. I began to hate Longview at this point. It was flat with few landmarks, and I kept getting lost.

So we took my car and began to explore. I'm not sure how we found the wreck of the Peter Iredale that first day. Maybe Erby or Alex had mentioned it. It's a short drive of about 15 minutes, although I've never clocked it, but you wouldn't find it unless you either stumbled on it by accident or knew exactly where to go. You have to make some non-intuitive choices to get there. What an interesting thing to find on the beach! And, I was stunned by how beautiful Oregon's beaches are. I had not done a lot of research; I was more focused on rental prices and basic amenities. I'd not only found an incredible apartment in my price range, but now this astonishing beach. I also remember driving through a fern-filled pine forest on the way, and had been totally charmed and surprised by what I saw. I felt I'd settled in paradise. So much of interest and beauty was so close to home. The climate seemed just right for me. I loved it.

I often call the wreck, the "bones" of the Peter Iredale, and this photo almost looks like bones, yes?

The tide was out. You can see the waves through the ship's skeleton. Laurel wrote some things about the Peter Iredale, and I'll refer you to her blog for the history and pix of when it was a floating ship.

Very cool. Barnacles and rust. That's funny, I just found a photo of the Peter Iredale with that exact title on Panoramio. It shows the location, too. The barnacles are clearer than this picture with my old camera.

Oregon welcomed us with a beautiful clear day. It wasn't too hot, either, especially here by the water. I don't think I'd been to the beach during the eight years I lived in Colorado. This beach is not much for swimming unless you like wetsuits and cold water, but it's absolutely gorgeous. This picture is facing south. You can see two pieces of metal sticking up out of the sand. These are part of the ship's stern.

There's the bow end of the wreck again. What an amazing setting. I love being surrounded by living things, including grass and seagulls and small crabs.

Still pretty tired and deciding to take it easy, we returned to Astoria and treated ourselves to dinner out at Baked Alaska. Here's one of the views from the window.

And another view. These scenes would become so familiar, but these are my first pictures of them. The pilot boat is in dock, and the tall bit of land in the middle of the horizon is Tongue Point. The water is the wide expanse of the Columbia River. You can see the radio tower sticking up from behind the building. That tower would have great significance for me later, but at the moment it was just another part of the unique and charming scenery.

There's the radio tower again. We had a lovely dinner with excellent food, but we splurged and had their signature Baked Alaska dessert. I discovered during the night that for me, chocolate and alcohol don't mix! Weird, but true. I haven't been able to mix them since (and I have tried more than once :)