We saw several sand dune areas in California and Oregon. These are strange to me, most of them are far, far from the coast. Makes no sense, but the world is full of mystery. Most of these cool sand mountains are accessible to offroad vehicles, and you see a lot of traffic and tourism devoted to the sport of riding the dunes. One year, Erik and I rented quads and did it ourselves.
This trip, Karin and I stopped at a smaller protected dune area in Oregon. This one is so small as to hardly be noticeable (compared to these big ones that go on for tens of miles). I don't know what the name of it is, but it made a great afternoon stop and a good place to run the dogs. This one is about 5-8 miles from the coast, but one dune area in California was a couple hundred miles from the coast.
The Oregon dunes are the largest expanse of coastal sand dunes in North America. Ifyou would like to learn more about how these dunes were formed and about the geology, check out the Siuslaw National Forest web site. Anyhow, here's what we saw:
Sophie for scale. Realize that she's a full-sized Berkshire Mountain Poodle.
Dunes and pines and our rig parked on the roadside.
We were surrounded by the coastal mountains. You can see its about to rain again, after raining all morning.
Sophie is looking off at the coast. If you look, there's the mountain to the left and then a tiny bump that is one of the haystack rocks in the Pacific Ocean.
Here is where the dune meets the forest, and the dune is sliding down. This boundary seemed to be pretty stable.
Something about the dunes made everyone crazy. Dogs just ran and ran.
Even Dr. V took a turn at Hill-Rolling (and spent the rest of the day shaking sand out of his ears.
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