Looking back it seems obvious. If you go to the beach on a sunny Memorial Day, you are going to have company. Lots and lots of company. Yet somehow I was in last-man-on-earth mode as I headed to the beach. I was… disappointed.
It didn’t help matters that the next stretch of sandy beach I was planning on traversing started at the D River State Park, one of the busiest beach accesses in Lincoln County on normal day. You might be interested to know that the D River is the shortest river in the world. As you might imagine it is a rather unimpressive sight to behold.
From the moment my feet hit the sand, people were all up in my business. It was like everyone from a thousand miles around came to the beach that day and were acting like they owned the place.
There is a little known place in Lincoln City where you can drive your car onto the beach. Every once in awhile there will be a car or two parked down there. On this day there was somewhere around two dozen. And all of the owners of these cars as well as the passengers were out on the small outcropping of rocks, terrorizing the local wildlife. Every sea anemone there must have been poked in the mouth a thousand times that day.
Besides being Memorial Day, it must have been national Take-Your-Dog-to-the-Beach-Off-Leash Day. I know I’ve gone on and on about keeping your dog on a leash while at the beach, but if you can get your dog to stay with you, I honestly don’t have a problem with it. However, if you are like one of the many people I ran into, and your dog pretty much does whatever he wants, perhaps one of the busiest beach days of the year isn’t the best day to take Fido to the beach off-leash for the first time. As it happens my dogs are lovers not fighters, and are very human and dog friendly. What gets me is that people seem to take this as a given. My dogs are both young, athletic, fast, have very strong jaws, and are always together. If my dogs weren’t lovers and were instead fighters, they would tear your labradoodle asunder before you could say “Poopsie, come here”. I would like to reiterate that in reality, a three year old could push my dogs around.
Play time.
Okay, enough complaining. The weather was great, I found a nice gravel bar with a surprising number of agates considering it was literally fifty feet north of the D River, and the beach was closer to normal occupancy once you were a hundred feet away from an access. The entire beach is lined my houses, condos, and hotels. However, what this does to the ambiance is somewhat made up for by all the very nice public beach accesses.
It’s a sad story about harassing the wildlife (the dog thing, too). I’m sorry to say that we’ve all seen it. It’s a shame. On the other hand, you are really something when it comes to finding agates!
well i’ve starting a very rough mental draft of a post on agates. so if i do it right, you’ll know all my secrets
WoooHooo! I’m looking forward to it.
Totally agree about the dogs. As you may have noticed in my posts, I do let mine off leash once in awhile for a good run, but she comes when I call and it only happens if we’re pretty much alone. It’s always the irresponsible folks who ruin it for everyone else. It’s happened with pet friendly motels changing their policy to accept dogs, too.
as of yet i have never had to look for a pet friendly hotel. but i do know that there aren’t any state parks with more than one dog friendly yurt. makes me wish i owned an RV.
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i’m flattered