I like big beaches....

 try riding your bike on the beach, and take a picture of that....it ain't easy! I did it and I didn't crash, but I came ---- that close to falling over. Owww!
I have to go to the edge of the dirt, where the saltwater meets the edge, and gaze. I think about things, big thinking thoughts. I think how small I am.
I think about what is swimming out there. I think about a sailing ship setting out in 1600something and sailing across the wide wide ocean. I read a lot of Joseph Conrad. And I feel small.

my vintage Schwinn gazes out ....and she feels small.

The 3rd day we drove over that big huge ass Astoria bridge. It is very high, and I was getting scared. I drive over the Narrows bridge all the time...but it feels different.

This is me, not feeling so calm, but looking like I am.
I'm a pretty good actress.

Looking up into the beams of the bridge....

Finally we drove to the beach near Fort Stevens. It was windy and very warm. It was windy. It always is. The wind flies down from Alaska and over from Japan.
It is windy wind.
The sand moves all the time. It swallows anything it wants to swallow. There used to be an asphalt road here. Now, not so much. I don't think the State of Oregon spends much time sweeping and moving the sand back on to the beach where it belongs. ;-)

It makes waves in the sand.....everchanging patterns.....
each wave of sand is about 3" - 6" wide....

we walked out to the shipwreck....

It looks tiny from the top of the parking lot, but it's the height of  a two story building at the front of the bow. When it was a ship...you would stand on the top deck and gaze out to America, and wonder what in the flippin' hell you were doing out in the middle of the ocean.

The Peter Iredale, from Liverpool England, was a four-masted steel barque  sailing vessel that ran ashore on the Clatsop Spit at Fort Stevens on October 25, 1906, on the coast of Oregon en route to Portland while trying to find its way through the mouth of the Columbia River.  It was abandoned after it couldn't be pulled back out to the sea. The Captain was found to be innocent of any wrongdoing after an official inquiry. 

This is a picture of a 4 masted barque, the Kaiwo Maru (King of the Sea), from Japan.





I was amazed at the blowing sand and I took a tiny movie of the wind and the sand blowing....blowing....blowing....