For many years of my life, I spent countless hours relaxing, eating, and generally enjoying the company of people with a beach house on Lincoln Beach. Lincoln Beach is a little community in between Lincoln City and Depoe Bay that basically only has a grocery store and espresso place. Regardless, I have oodles of good memories. The beach house in which we stayed was home to one of my favorite things: journals. It had piles and piles of journals from when the family first bought the home. Everyone who stayed there knew the drill. You write about your visit. If you’re snazzy, Joey and Sus, you draw pictures about your visit too and make everyone smile. Usually, the first thing I did when we arrived for our stay was sit down and read the journals until I reached our last entry. I loved those damn books. Often, in the many entries I read, people would mention hiking Cascade Head. As such, when I started this hiking adventure, I wanted to do it. I knew nothing about the hike. Wow! It did not disappoint.
Beach hikes are difficult because you first have to drive all that way. My sister, Sharock Bruce Hannah, Esq, and I woke up very early, hopped into White Fang (my sister’s car – a boat of a Taurus that we all love), and headed for Lincoln City. I’ve driven the route so many times it was like second nature. We listened to Sharock’s music for awhile. It was the soundtrack from Guardians of the Galaxy. We had seen it two days before. If you haven’t seen that movie, by the way, you’re missing out. Some of you may know my aversion to talking animals. A talking animal STARS in the film and I still love it. That’s saying something. Sharock is rarely allowed control of the music, because although he picks really good songs, he plays them over and over and over and over again. Bad boy. We switched over to Pandora and continued our journey.
When we reached Lincoln City, we stopped at the Safeway for some snacks. I ate about a gallon of trail mix. My sister ate ridiculous pastries. Sharock had bread, and meat, and cheese. We were ready to head north, it’s seriously like 5 minutes, and get hiking. We reached the trail head, which is in Knight Park, and hit the trail.
It was kinda weird at first. It wound its way on and off the road, with some cool bridges (there are super neato bridges “features” throughout the hike) in the forest just off the road, and then we hit the actual trail and the steps from hell. The hike starts, after your road winding, with 200 billion steps. If you hike, you may know about steps. They suck!!!! It is so much easier, more pleasurable, and just preferable to walk up a steep hill than it is to do steps. They are awful. But, eventually, we vanquished the steps. Sharock was at the top waiting for us, of course. As we continued, the views were breathtaking. I adore the Oregon coast. It feels like home. I spent so many of my childhood vacations at the beach visiting my grandma and papa, who lived in Bay City (my papa passed away in 2003,but my grandma now lives in Gresham), that it’s just a comforting place for me. The salty air and crazy wind, it’s like a giant hug.
The bottom part of the hike, besides the steps, is pretty level and winding. Then when you reach the viewpoints you head up and up and up. The total hike is 6.8 miles and 1,310 feet in elevation gain. It was really steep in some parts, nothing we couldn’t handle though. We stopped at the viewpoint at the top, enjoying the 360 view. Then we continued on the forest path to the upper trailhead. We heard these really gross fat people talking about how, “They couldn’t believe that stupid idiots actually walked up to the viewpoint from the bottom instead of just coming from the top. Why would anyone do that?” Um, because we don’t want to look like you….
The downhill was rough on our knees but we all survived. Our talk was mostly of wedding plans. It’s only two short months before Jessie and Sharock become husband and wife. I am so excited and happy for them. We also talked about the physics behind “jet propulsion” which is what we call farting while hiking. I’ll spare you the details.
After the hike we went to Mo’s, of course, and it was brilliant. Thanks, Oregon, for being our home.
For information about Cascade Head click here.
52hikesin52weeks 