14: Cape Lookout State Park

Date: 6/4/11

Time: 6 hours

Distance: 8.4 miles + a little extra!

Difficulty: Moderate

Stars: 4 

So this wonderful coast hike means Kyle and I are finally caught up in all the hiking posts we need to do. But we are also planning on doing some other blog posts now that we will need to fill the space until we get out hiking again! We went to Seattle way back in January and want to share that trip, we were in Chicago in April, and Missouri in May. My brother, Andy, visited in April, and then we think we are going to start blogging about the great places to eat. So if you start seeing a wider variety of posts, its because we don't have lots of time to hike anymore! I also want to do a post about my new job!! So keep a lookout for those!

Bears like the coast too!!
Apparently the coast is bear country!

No on to this hike...

Kyle and I have been to the Oregon coast 3 times now and I am still amazed by the beauty of it! While driving to the trailhead, we realized this was one of the spots we stopped at when we were with Kyle's family back in January-it is part of the Three Capes Scenic Loop. Even back in January when it was really cold we were all thinking about hiking down to the cape! Plus there were cars in the parking lot! So when we pulled up and there were TONS of cars, we weren't too surprised.

There are technically 3 paths in this hike: down to the cape, right to the picnic area, and left to the beach. We went to the cape and to the beach. We started by going down to the cape first, and the cape is seriously like a giant finger sticking out into the ocean, so the hiking trail weaved back and forth so we saw the coast both to the north and south. The hike was mostly downhill and with quite a few muddy places. But for a coast hike, it didn't get much better!

View to the north!

View to the south! (heading back)

View at the end of the cape! There's the stupid
guardrail...

Kyle and I were a little disappointed at the end. The author of our book told us we would get to see sea lions and seals, but there is no way you would be able to do that from the end of the trail. It just ends with a guard rail up all around and great views of the ocean and the coast to the north and south. Kyle and I were a little dissappointed so we hopped the guardrail and basically rock climbed down the side of the cape. We ended up sitting down about 50 feet below the actual stopping place and having lunch! While we were eating and taking in the beautiful view, we swore we could hear sea lions and seals! We could have kept trekking on down, but we weren't sure what the payoff would be, so we decided to save it for next time!

Over the guardrail we went!

We hiked back until we came to the intersection with the path down to South Beach. This trail is seriously all downhill and through the forest. At one point we turned a corner and had a beautiful view of the beach! It looked so close! But we still had some more to go. Once we got to the beach we walked around on the sand for a bit and then took off toward the end of the cape, but on the water's edge. We brought along our rock climbing shoes and wanted to find a space to boulder. We had to walk across tons of large rocks until we found a decent spot. Kyle climbed first, he is way more brave than me, but found that the rock wasn't the best rock to climb because chunks of the rock would just break off. So he climbed down and then we headed back.

View of the beach! And the cape we just hiked out to!

Bye bye sandy beaches...hello rocks!

My idea of rock climbing...

This wasn't even that hard to climb to!

I'm really good at spotting people while
they rock climb: I just take pictures instead!

We walked along the beach for a little bit and were going to throw around our frisbee, but the wind was so strong that the sand stung when it hit our legs! We figured we had been out for long enough by that point, and we were getting hungry, so we headed back up the trail to our car. Surprisingly, the hike back up was not as bad as I thought it was going to be! Maybe it was because Kyle and I were talking about what we were going to do for dinner the entire time!

For dinner we decided to drive about 8 miles south of our trailhead to Pacific City and eat at Pelican Pub and Brewery. Kyle and I ate lunch there when we were with his family in January, but we both liked it so much and knew we loved the beer that we went back. The wait for a table was 50 minutes, expected on a Saturday night at 7, so we took our time walking up the beach. Another reason we decided to go to Pelican was because it is located right on the beach (seriously check out the link above!!) and we wanted to walk on the beach some more! So we enjoyed the beach for about a half hour before we made our way to the bar to get beers. We then sat on the patio and watched a bunch of frisbee dogs play catch with their owner in the sand. Nothing like free entertainment!

The sand keeps going and going and going...so pretty!

Haystack Rock!

We ate a delicious dinner and drank wonderful beer before we made the hour and a half drive through the coastal mountains back to Portland. We didn't get home until after midnight! But it was a wonderful day and I am already planning our next trip back to the coast!