Oregon Coast Summer's Dreamy Discoveries May Include Weirdly Calm Waters

Published 8/20/24 at 8:15 a.m.
By Andre' GW Hagestedt, Oregon Coast Beach Connection

(Depoe Bay, Oregon) – Think of it like a summer postcard from Depoe Bay.

Summer is full of twists and turns, if you do it right.

That's even so out on the central Oregon coast, what is essentially the most-traveled section of these beaches.

Take a little bit of time just driving around Highway 101 while keeping your eyes peeled you're going to bump into new things you didn't know existed. Pay attention to the smallest of details, maybe even just a random opening in the brush along Oregon's coastal highway, and suddenly you'll find another beach access. Or maybe just a little pocket of near-beach land that yields the unexpected: there could be secret trails lurking there.

Timing is also key: curious things just occur at certain moments. Like around Depoe Bay. This is what we found one August:

There may be a new secret beach, for instance. Summer's fascinating high sand levels and really calm waves can allow access to a part of Fogarty Beach – a few miles north of Depoe Bay – not normally seen. It's a tiny pocket beach of rough sands and odd rock structures, pinched between the northern edge of Fogarty Beach and the southern face of Fishing Rock State Park. Amazing stuff is found here, like rock structures that look like dinosaur skeletons.

In summer, blue skies can often mean blue ocean on the Oregon coast with a tantalizing run of lovely weather. Rocky Creek State Park, just south of town, showed this off well one day in early August. It turns out there's an interesting reason why this is. More coming below....

And then there's always whale sightings. A lot of summers they can be off the charts. Your best bets for whale spotting – really any time of year – are on those tour boats operating out of Depoe Bay and Newport. Sitting just outside of the bay's mouth, they often get quite a show from a nearby cetacean.

Then hit the top of Cape Foulweather and look down. The Devil's Punch Bowl and Otter Rock look tiny from up here, and you can see more of the beach that sits just out of reach of the access.

Sometimes, the sea is almost absolutely still – like a lake. It's weird. That generally only happens in summer (or the Second Summer of September / October) when offshore winds have ceased for some reason. This is all the more striking in the Depoe Bay area, where even the cliffs that normally get battered are seeing almost no wave action.

Here, at Rodea Point (between Rocky Creek and Cape Foulweather), this place is normally downright fiery in its watery madness. Waves leap into the air, sometimes to incredible heights, and ocean spray waters the cars hanging out near these basalt bluffs. Yet occasionally, just randomly along the Oregon coast, the waves are so still it's practically like a lake, even here. Downright astounding.

For more astonishing glimpses of the Depoe Bay area, it's time to head forward in time during the day – after the sun goes down. Here, on a nearly full-moon night, the seas surrounding Depoe Bay give new and striking meaning to the concept of the midnight sun.

Just north of town, this is Gleneden Beach in that splendid midnight sun. A mix of moonlight, starlight and streetlamps color this scene in a most memorable way.

There's much more to the Oregon coast than just daylight exploration.

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Andre' GW Hagestedt is editor, owner and primary photographer / videographer of Oregon Coast Beach Connection, an online publication that sees over 1 million pageviews per month. He is also author of several books about the coast.

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