A landscape photographer's tour
Crescent City, CA to Bandon, OR

Keith's travels in California and the Pacific Northwest - April-May 2007

This photo-diary covers a driving trip up the coast from San Francisco in April/May 2007 along the Pacific highway

Now I've returned, I've included some of my travel photography from this trip in the main Gallery, and updated any info that may be of help to people who come across these pages as part of their planning for driving tours of the California and Oregon coasts, looking for places to stay or sites to visit.

It's a great place for a vacation, or just a road trip up the Pacific coast to photograph some of the scenery. If you've any questions about the hotels/inns/motels where I stayed, then please do feel free to drop me a line.

There are other photo travel diaries covering trips to:
Washington and Oregon in Fall 2007 and Colorado in Spring 2006 and Fall 2008

Daily pages 19th April: UK to San Francisco 20th April: San Francisco to Jenner, CA 21st April: Jenner, CA to Fort Bragg, CA 22nd April: Fort Bragg, CA to Eureka, CA 23rd April; Eureka, CA to Crescent City, CA 24th April: Crescent City, CA to Bandon, OR 25th April: Bandon, OR to Florence, OR 26th April: Florence, OR 27th April: Florence, OR to Pacific City, OR 28th April: Cape Kiwanda, OR 29th April: Pacific City, OR to Cannon Beach,OR 30th April: Cannon Beach, OR to Shasta, CA 1st May: Shasta, CA to Lakeport, CA 2nd May: Lakeport, CA to San Francisco 3rd May: San Francisco to UK

What's the Californian weather like? What's the Oregon weather like?

National Weather Service radar (Pacific Northwest) What are the roads like? (CA)

Why not create your own customised A3 size wall calendar from some of Keith Cooper's photographs. Choose your own images for your own custom printed calendar - 12 months starting any month of the year. Choose from nearly a hundred images - many not yet in our main gallery.

Early morning in Crescent City and the weather is fine.

Driving round the parts without trees anymore give a feel for when the entire area was covered in huge forests

I'm now heading up highway 101 towards Oregon.

So, on into Oregon

And the first nice beach of the day

Almost entirely devoid of other people too...

Some of the beaches are a bit trickier to get to, but you can rest assured I didn't have to walk very far.

I also stopped of at Port Orford for a coffee - this is as far south as I got on my last visit to the Oregon coast in 2004

As you can see the weather was starting to get a bit less pleasant.

Excellent coffee :-)

Heading north I cross a bridge, where the designer obviously knew there was some spare money in the budget, or just had too much spare time.

Today I'm staying in Bandon.

A very nice room at the Bandon Inn, with a view over the harbour and old town

The view is clearer in this shot

or from below

or even from my room (arrowed above) at night

At the harbour

One of the things worth knowing about the Oregon coast, is that there is an active subduction zone just off out in the ocean.

If you are visiting, then do make a mental note of these signs if you see them...

Here's a convenient sign near the beach, explaining things (note excellent chip shop to left ;-)

A very nice beach too...

Meanwhile, back in Bandon I spotted this shop window, illustrating my point about lime green from the other day in Point Reyes Station

So many presents for people back home...

I'd forgot, I'm in the land of cranberries - what else can we make with them?

More presents taken care of ;-)

Then I headed off to the lighthouse at the other side of the harbour entrance.

The view is from the entrance jetty and shows some of the rather large driftwood they get on this coast.

Here's a few more bits thrown together by the waves

While I was standing on the jetty, I suddenly realised I was being watched

And another one

To the north, it looked a bit rough...

heading back into Bandon, there's a bridge where the centre section lifts for boats to get through

You can see the counterweights in this view

Tomorrow, I think I may go up to Florence...

NEXT DAY

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