Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. ♠

Iambic pentameter courtesy of William Shakespeare. (Sonnet 18) 

Run Along Chetco Cove

We left our room and began jogging on the road across the harbor. We inhaled fresh morning air and enjoyed misty fog that hung over the masts of the boats.
 
Two Columbian black-tailed deer walked down the hill near our hotel, feeding on grass. That would be a good omen.
 
We ran along the west side of the harbor and to the jetty where the Chetco River meets the Pacific Ocean. There we stopped and stretched our waking muscles.
 

My daughter, Jenna, has made the goal to run in as many states as possible. We couldn't pass up Oregon. And it was a good excuse to work our muscles after endless hours in a car.
 
I sat and leaned and pulled on one side, then repeated on the other. Thighs, calves, quads, piriformis. Then I was ready to go.
 
A sea lion lay asleep below us, not yet up and moving at this early hour. Another good omen.
 
We ran along the beach, just far enough away that the crawling foam of the water couldn't reach our feet. The black sand felt like running on a sponge.
 
Seagulls squawked and flew above us. A man and his golden lab walked alongside, the dog frolicking in the water. We passed an early-morning fisherman with a long pole with his taut line cast into the ocean.
 
Our muscles were now loosening and our stride became a rhythm and everything felt in place. The fresh scent of ocean permeated everything and took the edge off of any discomfort we may have felt.
 
At the far south end of the beach, at a place that appeared to be the terminus of our sandy stretch, we found an arch in the rock wall—and a passage to the other side! We entered the portal and found ourselves on a new beach with a new stretch of sand.
 

But this morning was not all about the run. It was about the experience. There before us sat a tide pool begging to be explored.
 
While still panting we discovered all sorts of sea creatures. Jenna found the first of many starfish. In orange and blue and red the curious critters attached themselves to the rock and sat motionless, letting the incoming waves lap over them.
 
Anemones—by the hundreds—surrounded the star fish. If you didn't look closely you could miss them. They camouflaged well. Some were small, the size of a quarter, and others large like a softball. Their trunks attached to the rock, and they were soft to the touch like a marshmallow. Most of these small sea creatures remained closed, appearing as mere bumps on the rock. Several had opened their tentacles, shimmering colorfully in the water.
 

We sat at the edge of the pool, careful not to soak our shoes. What an array of sea life! On every rock there seemed to be hundreds of creatures, including mussels and other colorful shells.
 
To top things off we found a waterfall pouring off a cliff. The fog remained, shrouding the sea stacks and the spruce trees on the hills of the shore. We chose to run to the end of this second beach where we turned around.
 
This world is full of so many beautiful places. This morning our run probably stretched only a mile in one direction. Considering how pretty it was, it boggles my mind to imagine this stretch of coastline, multiplied by the total coastline of the planet! There is so much to see, and so little time to waste. How much more valuable is it then to share it with someone we love. ♠

Del Mar

I wasn't expecting much. In fact, I was sure that when we made it down to the end of the road there would be someone patrolling the beach who would immediately turn us back. When we saw the border patrol, we almost turned around before we even got there.
 
Indeed these were hysterical times, appearing as something from a science-fiction movie. Cops and coastal patrol did all they could to keep people off the beaches and boardwalks. But their efforts proved futile, akin to playing whack-a-mole with a stubborn people, anxious to get a breath of fresh air and hear the rolling motion of the waves.
 

And as for us, we weren't sure where we were going. We spontaneously parked the car on Camino del Mar, found a side-road and marched west. We didn't know what we'd find.
 
When we arrived at the end of the side-road, the scene wasn't exactly as I had expected. Instead of a beach on the other side of the dead-end, there were railroad tracks. And as for the border patrol agent, he was talking and laughing with two guys and sitting on a guard rail. When the agent left for a moment to answer a call I approached the two men and asked, “Does he care that we're here?”
 
“No, not at all. He's here watching for a boat that's supposed to be smuggling narcotics. He doesn't care what you do.”
 

That was all we needed to hear. We already saw one man on the other side of the tracks, so we decided to slip over the railing and do it ourselves. When we did, we couldn't believe our eyes.
 

We realized that we now stood on a high bluff top overlooking the ocean. Far below us sat miles of empty beach with what seemed like tiny ripples rolling in. I didn't dare get too close to the edge for fear that it would give way and sluff us to the bottom.
 
Near us another hill climbed to a higher point on the bluff. We walked to the top and found an even grander view. The crest of this hill stretched a couple hundred yards in the form of a narrow strip, with train tracks below us on one side and steep cliffs on the other. A dirt trail meandered along the middle of the narrow strip and hundreds of yellow and purple flowers grew on all sides!
 

We walked very slowly along the trail, stopping frequently to take pictures. With every step there was a photo opportunity that couldn't be passed. Sometimes I would steady my right foot and lean toward the edge of the cliff to snap a dramatic landscape photo, but the thought of falling off scared me to death and I would quickly retract.
 
Jenelle and I agreed that this was one of the greatest discoveries of our trip. It was perhaps one of the most picturesque places I had ever seen—and it was just a strip of dirt on the other side of the railroad tracks. And we almost didn't go there!
 

We returned the way we came and found ourselves once again on Camino del Mar. We came across a dessert shop where we created our own cup of frozen yogurt, complete with chocolate and blueberry sprinkles. We found a couple chairs on the sidewalk and sat down. We savored every bite of our treat while letting the afternoon sun soak into our skin. ♠