VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Grand Adventure
Ep. 316: Oregon's Three Capes | RV travel camping hiking crabbing clamming Tillamook
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Music Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure. I'm your host Mark Guido, and we are spending the July 4th holiday weekend in the Three Capes area of northern Oregon's coastline. We'll bring you along this week as we do some exploring, do some hiking, and even take the opportunity to try to harvest our own seafood. So stay tuned. Music Music We came here to avoid the crowds for four nights over the July 4th holiday weekend, and we got what we came for. If you're unfamiliar with hip camp, think of it as the Airbnb of campsites where folks rent out their land to campers.
That's what our host Jesse has done after carving several campsites out of his 52 acres that he calls Timber Sands, near the Sand Lake Recreation Area along the northern Oregon coast in Tillamook County. We're sharing a meadow with our friends Dale and Pat, dry camping for $35 per night, away from the crowds drawn to campgrounds over the holiday. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Oregon's Three Capes area is comprised of Cape's Kiwanda, lookout, and mirrors, all in close proximity to one another along the northern Oregon coast. Cape Kiwanda is the smallest and southernmost of these, adjacent to the town of Pacific Beach, which itself is guarded by a sea stack known alternatively as Haystack Rock or Chief Kiwanda Rock.
A state scenic area occupies Cape Mirs, the northernmost of the three, at the south end of Tillamook Bay and nearby the tiny towns of Neetarts and Oceanside. The Cape is named for John Mirs, a British explorer. Music Built in 1890, Cape Mirs Light served as the light station for Tillamook Bay, visible for 21 miles out to sea. It was deactivated in 2014. Music Music Visiting Cape Mirs provides the perfect opportunity for a relaxing lunch at the schooner, waterside in Neetarts. Music Music The largest of the three capes, Cape Lookout, is located roughly equidistant between the other two. It's a large east-west oriented mountain that juts out into the Pacific for a couple of miles.
It comprises Cape Lookout State Park. We had hoped to kayak today, but the north wind is ferocious, so Zoe and I are instead hiking with Dale and Pat out to the tip, via the Cape Trail, a 4. 7 mile out-and-back route with 793 feet of total elevation gain. Music While the first half of the trail is a well-manicured boulevard, the second half is a muddy mess with ample tree roots to negotiate. Music A B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crashed here on Cape Lookout during World War II. Only the bombardiers survived. All nine other crew members perished. Music The viewpoint at the end of the trail is well worth the effort to get here.
Music Music When we come back following a quick ad break, we'll try our hand at harvesting our own shellfish, as well as visit the sand dunes here and the Tillamook Air Museum, so stay tuned. Music While staying at Timbersands, Jesse is made available a crab trap to try our hand at shellfishing. He's also willing to show us the ropes, so to speak. We're at the beautiful Sand Lake Recreation Area, only a mile or two down the road from our camp. Despite its name, Sand Lake is not a lake at all. Instead it's a bay open to the Pacific Ocean.
There are three established campgrounds here in the recreation area, and some expansive sand dunes for off-roading, all of which are teaming with people this Independence Day weekend. But out here, near the mouth of the recreation area's namesake 900-acre estuary, it's not busy at all. Music The trap is baited with fish before being tossed out into the water to attract Sand Lake's native dungeness crabs. Jesse says that they'll enter the bay on the incoming tide and follow it back out into the ocean as the tide recedes. We're also restricted by law to only harvesting adult males, and Jesse shows us the difference on a small female we've found floating dead in the water.
So the females have this real wide, this is actually a little flap that they use for breeding. The males will have a very narrow one. Okay, got it. Once you see both of them, it's really, I mean, the girls have a V and the guys have a D. Got it, got it, got it, got it. Music Music Music We've left the pot to soak for about 90 minutes or so. Despite the wind on the water's surface, we had spotted several crabs marching along the sandy bottom towards the trap, so we're optimistic. Music We got a big fat zero. Nata. Nata. Man, they were there. They were there. Just not interested.
As long as we have an Oregon shellfish license, we'll make up for the previous day's unsuccessful crab fishing by digging for clams in Neetarts Bay. Which includes over 1,500 acres of intertidal land exposed by two low tides daily. Clamming is something that you do on the mudflats at low tide when the region's native Manila clam steamers, one of four species of clam here, are found only a couple of inches down into the mud. It's our job to find them and dig them out. An annual shellfishing license for Oregon residents costs $10 for the calendar year, and is good for both crabs and clams.
It's $28 for out-of-staters like us, or $19 for the three-day license that I've purchased online. Music Got one. Music Music It only takes about 10 minutes for us to reach our daily quota of 20 clams each. Music We've also caught a couple of Dungeness crabs at the local fish market, which we'll cook together with the clams we've harvested for a seafood steam right at camp. Music These are easily the tastiest crabs and clams I've ever enjoyed. We're heading out in Jesse's 1974 Jeep to check out the scene at the adjacent Sand Lake Recreation Area, which includes over a thousand acres of open sand dunes for recreation.
They begin at the Sand Lake Estuary and extend to the northeast, about 3. 5 miles. The dunes are surrounded on three sides by a coastal mixed conifer forest, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean. To say it's a little busy out here for the holiday weekend would be the understatement of the year. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Following another quick ad break to pay the bills, we'll visit the Tillamook Air Museum, housed in a World War II blimp hangar, so stay tuned. Another point of interest in the Three Capes area, if you're so inclined, is the Tillamook Air Museum, housed in a positively massive former blimp hangar at a former US Navy air station outside of Tillamook.
This six blimp hangar was built by the United States Navy in 1942 during World War II. It is 1,072 feet long and 296 feet wide, standing 192 feet tall and covering more than seven acres. It is breathtaking in its scale. Blimps used to patrol the US West Coast during World War II, and were moved into and out of the hangar with this locomotive. Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Erikson Air Crane used this mini guppy parked outside of the hangar to haul heavy equipment until 1995, when it was retired to this air museum. Music Music Music Music Music Music.
S K R Y B O T
Skrybot. 2023, Video transcriptions from YouTube
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