Wednesday June 14, 17.9mi/28.8km

Mouth of Columbia River (0.0/10ft) to Seaside Village (17.6/12ft) (OR) +0.3mi to Hostel

I ate breakfast and packed up my tent while talking to two other campers who were at the campsite. When I went to get my breakfast out of the food locker, I noticed each locker had an outlet for charging. Amazing.

I walked over to the ranger station to pay for my campsite, since they had been closed the night before when I arrived.

I walked out to the main road to hitch a ride to the start of the trail.

About 45 minutes later my ride dropped me off at the jetty and lookout tower, both of which were under construction for repairs.

Even without the lookout tower, the view was still pretty good from up on the jetty.

Every trail has a starting photo!

I walked on the jetty for 10 minutes, heading toward the dunes and beach.

The unmarked trail through the dunes was pretty easy to follow.

I dropped down to the beach, and it had a cool cobblestone texture.

Pretty soon it changed over to the normal hardpacked sand. Even though it was almost high tide, the beach was still huge.

An hour later I hiked by the shipwreck, Peter Iredale. It ran aground in 1906 on its way to the Columbia River.

This area is known as the graveyard of the Pacific. Neat!

This is the only section of beach in Oregon where cars are allowed to drive on it. And sure enough, I saw a dozen or so driving up and down the hardpacked sand.

Even at the highest tide, I still had plenty of beach to walk on.

This was a massive tree stump that must have washed ashore, it looked cool the way it was cut at a bunch of different geometric angles.

Somebody has wedged a sand dollar in one of the stump’s cracks, ha!

I hiked on the beach all morning and some of the afternoon, this is the longest stretch of beach on the entire Oregon Coast Trail. This bird seemed rather intent on its meal…

…. So of course I had to go check out what it was trying to eat. A dead sea critter! Its skeleton was about 6 feet long, I wonder what it was.

It was pretty cloudy all day, and a couple times it even misted it a little bit. I continued to hike with my warm hat and vest on, since it never got above 60°F/16C.

After 15 miles, I left the beach and exited through the dunes.

I walked through the small seaside village of Gearhart, which apparently has a problem with roaming elk.

I walked on highway 101 for about a mile, which wasn’t ideal. But using roads is sometimes the only way across coastal rivers, which can be pretty deep and wide.

Pretty soon I had left Gearhart and entered Seaside, a larger tourist town.

The slogan of this business made me laugh, “get to higher ground” ha!

This trail was starting to remind me of the Te Araroa in New Zealand, with all of the beach walks and fish & chip shops.

I love every kind of fish, so of course I stopped and bought some. Delicious.

I finished my second lunch, and continued my walk through Seaside. The houses were all pretty nice, and a normal size too. Often in coastal towns there are giant McMansions that don’t fit in with the town character.

It was 4pm, and I was debating what to do. The next legal camping was 7 miles away, which would mean a 25-mile day. Or I could walk a couple blocks to the hostel, and stop for the day, which means only an 18 mile day. I decided to have an easy first day, and checked into the hostel.

Seaside Lodge & Hostel had a pretty chill atmosphere and I relaxed on the back deck overlooking the water. Eventually I got settled into my bunkroom and got a nice hot shower.

I had been a little cold all day, since it was cloudy and windy outside. The hot shower was a perfect way to fix that. I walked a couple blocks over to the tiny “grocery store”, which was terrible. But I found enough stuff to make dinner with. (There is a huge Safeway in town too, but it’s a mile away). After dinner I did some trip planning to try to figure out camping for the next few days, this trail is complex in that manner. It was an easy first day, but I still fell asleep by 10pm.