Crescent City to Florence... Right through Coos Bay!

We got up this morning and did a little Geocaching. Right across the street from the hotel there were two caches in a pretty cool Marina. After we checked out the first cache, we strolled down the docks and took some photos of fishing boats.











After the marina, we got on the road and headed north up US Highway 101. We stopped once and shot some photos of the ocean and some rocks out there that were as big as office buildings. I still have to process those photos.

We continued on and finally stopped in Coos Bay Oregon for lunch. We had a couple of sandwiches at City Subs, and then found a couple of more Geocaches. Then we got back on the road and realized that we were going to land in Florence around 4:30 pm. This was a little later than we had wanted to get there, but the sunset happened around 5:30 pm in Crescent City so, we thought we would be ok.
Boy were we wrong... By the time we got close, the sun was dropping like the stock market. I hopped on the internet and found a tide chart that showed the sunset time, and it said 4:41 pm. Allen started driving like Mario Andretti and we landed at the parking lot for the lighthouse at 4:34. We jumped out of the car and saw a sign that had an arrow pointing to a path and had a lighthouse symbol on it. And then.... we saw the worst thing.... under the sign was another little sign that said.... 1/2 mile!
We started jogging... the path was a half mile long, and it was twisty and uphill. I also knew that once we got to the lighthouse, we were going to have to climb up the hill in back of the lighthouse to get the angle for the photograph with the ocean and sunset in the background. We were losing light by the second! We finally got up to the lighthouse, and I spotted the path that led up around the backside of the lighthouse. I started up the path and then cut across a whole bunch of brush and finally after tripping a couple of times and getting filthy, I made it to the spot. I set up the tripod, and started clicking off frames. After I finally stopped gasping for air, I realized that my camera settings were all jacked up, and I hadn't checked anything because I was so happy just to get there.
So, I reset a few things, and started clicking off more shots. I haven't worked on all the shots yet, but here are a few.







Then as the sun died a slow death, I clicked off a 30 second exposure of the rocks and the waves.


We left the parking lot and were driving back down highway 101 and there was a little turnoff that we dove into so we could see the beam of the light house sweep across the ocean. This was the last shot of the day