On the northern Oregon coast, a lovely spit about three miles long juts south along the Nehalem River. The south end of the spit is protected as Nehalem Bay State Park. Driftwood piles high at the mouth of the Nehalem River, next to the stone jetty. It is a really nice spot.
I cross over the Ross Island Bridge every day going to work. Here is an angle from below, taken from the Springwater Corridor. (Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
The 49th Super Bowl is still being played. I am listening live on the radio, as the Hawks just went up 23-14. Here is how it looked at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, which thoughtfully opened up its doors to the public and showed the game on its giant screen.
High on the Columbia River Gorge, in the Mt. Hood National Forest, I found a number of standing dead trees that have been thoroughly scavenged by woodpeckers. Lovely place up here. Seven species of woodpeckers live in the forest, so I cannot say which ones may have hammered away here.
This is the last of my “photos in the mist” set that I published this week. I do like this one and the pure joy of watching birds being birds. You can listen to their calls on this web site run by Cornell Labs. I will anthropomorphize here and flat out say its an eery, almost haunting call. Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.
I decided to visit Kenton City in North Portland after spotting the famous Paul Bunyan statue from the Max rail line. This is on the U.S. Register of National Historic Places, a giant slab of concrete reminiscent of miniature golf course art from the 1950s and 1960s. Across from Paul sits the stripper club, as Portland apparently has the greatest concentration of stripper clubs per capita after sin city, Las Vegas. Had a nice coffee at Posies, found a nice piece of large-scale sculpture, and generally enjoyed my brief visit. This place exists because of the large stock and lumber yards that thrived along the Willamette River in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I am guessing this spot will gentrify in about three to five years, max.
My explorations of the industrial lands in north Portland uncovered some haunting images as the mist lingered for hours. I could photograph rail yards and shipping facilities forever, and the Port of Portland had some tasty visual morsels. I love the forms, the functionality, and total commercial nature of these places. They have one purpose, and that is to ship goods from one place to another. They represent commerce in its least packaged and purest form. You can see other photos I have taken of industrial forms on my web site. I also have documented a number of industrial sites in Portland on my blog.
This particular image is of the port’s Rivergate Industrial Park. The port’s web site reports Portland is the largest wheat export gateway for the country. (Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
I paid a visit today to Portland’s Kelley Point Park, a great fishing spot at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers near the industrial warehouse district that covers the old floodplains of northeast Portland. Sturgeon fishermen were casting lines, and a few drinking brews (hey, this is fishing). Best catch I saw was less than a foot, and it was all catch and release.
Portland’s riverfront, north of the Fremont Bridge (that big one seen in these photos), is utterly about work. Trains. Factories. Shipping and receiving facilities. Grain depots. Cement kilns. Factories. Fuel depots. The best perch to soak all that up is from Overlook Park. I took the photos from here, and also from another spot a block away at Overlook House. (Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
I found a few more photos to publish of the utter bliss many dogs experience being the center of all that attention at the Rose City Classic Dog show in Portland. (Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)
What Beautiful Light 