Saturday June 17, 21.9mi/35.2km

Barview Jetty County Campground (66.4/15ft) to Cape Lookout State Park (86.6/20ft) (OR)

I left camp at my usual 7am starting time, and as soon as I left the state park I was walking on some railroad tracks.

The tracks parallel highway 101, which I will avoid walking as much as possible. I walked along Tillamook Bay and saw a lot of people getting clams(?) out of the sand, since it was low tide.

An hour later I was at the Port of Garibaldi, where I needed to arrange a boat ride across the bay to continue the trail.

I talked to a woman at the marina and she agreed to get her daughter to ferry me across in a small boat. They can only do it when the tide is coming in (not going out), and it was $50. While I waited, I was kept company by their dog Goosey, who was very interested in giving me her bone.

It was a very windy and cold boat ride, but it only lasted 5 minutes, and was the easiest mile I have traveled yet on this trail.

Now back on land, I walked along the other side of Tillamook Bay for an hour.

At one point the trail left the bay, and crossed the narrow strip of land I was on….

…. To emerge thru the dunes and at the beach on the other side of this narrow strip.

After a relaxing couple miles on the beach, it ended at a headland so I walked inland through a small village.

I turned onto a road up to Cape Meares, and there was no traffic since the road was temporarily closed for a landslide. It was a relaxing walk through a very tall forest.

After a couple miles I was in the main area for Cape Meares, and I started seeing more people, since there is another access road from the other side.

After crossing the parking lot, the first thing I saw was the largest Sitka Spruce in Oregon!

It’s 800 years old and 144 ft tall, dang.

I put my backpack next to it for a size reference.

I continued down the path and rejoined the road that leads to the lighthouse. There were viewpoints looking north:

And to the south:

At the end of the peninsula was Oregon’s shortest lighthouse, the Tillamook lighthouse is only 38 feet tall.

It sits on top of a 200 ft cliff so it doesn’t need to be that tall. Even from the lower viewing platform it didn’t seem very tall!

I tried to get a look at the inside, but you had to make a paid reservation for a tour. Oh well.

I walked back toward the parking area and found myself a picnic table to eat lunch at.

It was next to this cool welcome sign that I had missed on the way in.

After lunch I continued South, and just before I left the park there was one last attraction, the octopus tree.

It’s a bizarre looking tree that has no central/main trunk, but instead has eight separate trunks. Wild!

I continued on a short trail through the forest and then had an hour of roadwalking before I arrived back on the beach again.

The beach seemed pretty empty and I hardly saw any people or footprints. I saw a couple cool tiny little waterfalls though.

And then I came around a corner, and I saw heaps of people. An entire wedding party, in fact.

It’s one of those wedding spots that would be beautiful in photos but everything else about it would suck – it was windy, there was sand blowing everywhere, and it smelled like low tide. Pretty soon the beach ended and I came to another marina. Theoretically it’s possible to get a boat shuttle across this bay as well, but I didn’t see anyone around except these two scuba divers in the water.

So I did the roadwalk around the bay, which was about the same distance and was a scenic walk.

Two hours later and I had arrived at Cape Lookout State Park.

I registered at the entrance booth, and then walked to the hiker/biker site, which was in a beautiful secluded corner of the campground.

Just like before, there were nice food storage lockers to keep my stuff safe from the critters. And a short 100m walk led to this amazing little viewpoint over the beach.

It was my favorite campsite on this trail so far! I went to bed early, since I have to start hiking at 5am tomorrow in order to make it through a spot that requires low tide.