When it was time to return to the trail we caught an Uber to get us where we needed to go. The trail in this area is a little challenging because it requires a boat shuttle at high tide (unofficial route) and the official route is almost exclusively on Highway 101 which the guidebook encourages us to skip.

The bright side of being able to bypass certain unappealing sections is the ability to spend more time enjoying the parts of the trail that do call to us. Like Cape Meares. I had time to hike a trail to see a giant Sitka spruce and I’m sure I would not have taken the time for that trail if we had been worried about connecting our footsteps precisely.

What was fun about Cape Meares was not only the really cute and tiny lighthouse but the fact that my partner Elliott was here when he was a kid – he now works on the North Shore of Minnesota at Split Rock Lighthouse. So it was fun to see one of his earliest encounters with a lighthouse.

I was also excited because out in those Waters is a federally designated Wilderness Area!

We were there really early in the morning so there was nobody else around.

We also made the obligatory stop to see the octopus tree. From there we walked through a couple of small towns and ended up on a pretty busy road to get us to Cape Lookout State Park where we got a Hiker Biker site.

Our experience at Cape Lookout was not amazing due to how overcrowded it was and how understaffed the park was. We just happened to hit it on a weekend when temperatures were soaring and everyone in the state was trying to get to the ocean. One bright side of our time there was getting to watch a spectacular sunset. It was also here I realized that I hadn’t actually touched the ocean yet so I made sure I did that.