China Creek Loop and Heceta Head Lighthouse

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
8/30/2018	7.6 miles	4 hours 12 minutes	1,193'	33:12

Map: See book
Parking: See book
Directions: Day Hiking Oregon Coast, Hike #51 China Creek Loop and Hike #53 Heceta Head Lighthouse

We spent last night in Eugene, heading over to coastal Oregon. I will miss the Cascades - not enough time spent there, but I don't want to leave Oregon, without seeing its coast. Eugene looks like a normal city - no more fruit farms, fir trees, etc. We were in traffic, and I kept going the wrong way despite using a GPS. Eugene did not excite me.

We chose two day hikes from our Oregon Coast book. It was a drizzly morning, kind of how I pictured the Pacific Northwest. We started hiking in the woods on a soft needle covered trail. It was very green, like a rainforest. We ended up walking through a campground on paved trail, and eventually found a sign to the "Beach Trail." We turned left on the beach. It was chilly, drizzly, windy, and grey. The beach was empty except for 1 person walking their dog. There were very few shells on the beach. Why? There were lots of feathers in the sand though. We didn't check tide charts ahead of time - we probably should have? I'm assuming our guide book would say which beach hikes you need to consider tides for. The beach ended at a rock outcrop - we went back uphill towards the parking area. This was an easy hike.

Instead of returning to our car, we continued towards the lighthouse. There were lots of steps and damp soil. We weren't able to go into the lighthouse, but there was a small room open, and we talked to one of the volunteers there. We told him we were from New York state. I like to include "state", because whenever you say New York, people seem to figure you live in New York City. He still seemed to think we were from the city. He said there were too many people there, lol. We had a view of the ocean next to the lighthouse, and watched birds and what Glen thinks were dolphins. Not sure - maybe they were sea lions. We saw lizards on the trail to the lighthouse - they were brown and unlike the ones we saw on previous hikes, these moved incredibly slowly.

Walking through a campground

Dolphin? Sea Lion?