Starting this weekend, the highway will be crowded with RV's, cyclists and run-of-the-mill tourists, looking for a place to pull off.
Hwy 101 is a two-laner in these parts of Oregon. People become irritable and insensitive after a few hours. They want to stop, walk on these beaches, find a restroom. And gawk.
The rest of us? We want to get to the hairdresser, school, work, at a good pace, say 45 to 55 miles per hour. Tourists forget that people have a life that demands appointments made and kept.
How else do you account for their hypnotic looks? One curve after another on this stretch of the 101 reveals one beautiful set of coves after another. Sky, sea and forest share kisses and flotsam, intimately connecting all points of the compass to eternity.
More accidents occur in the summer months when roads are clear of rain and ice and fog than at any other time. It must be all that gawking.
35 comments:
Yup...must be :-) Love that! But you know what stood out to me most in this post? "Sky, sea and forest share kisses and flotsam, intimately connecting all points of the compass to eternity." WOW!!! Pure poetry, Rosaria! I LOVE it!!! Simply incredible! Have a wonderful Memorial Day!! Love, Janine XO
Must be VERY tedious for the residents. :(
hard not to gawk with views like that...food for thought though as we are out in others backyards...
It certainly is gawk-worthy though.
neat!
Smiles!
Happy Summer! You live in a beautiful part of the country.
Sorry, but if I had views like that here, I would be slowing down to gawk all of the time too! hahaha :)
Happy Sunday!
Well, if I lived there, I would never be on time for any appointment--I'd be too busy gawking! You are lucky in your frustration.
Yep, too bad about all those gawkers...I'd probably be one of them ruining the residents' day on the road. Love to go slowly along the sea...it's such a mesmerizer. Sorry...I'll buy you lunch if you want to meet me at the nearest crab shack :)
LOL, we here in Hawaii understand :)
Aloha from Waikiki, Friend
Comfort Spiral
Hard to pay attention to the road when you keep seeing all that beauty.
the trials and tribulations of living in a beautiful place - we have exactly the same problems here.
ah, but who can really blame them?? i see the problem but have to confess that, in such a beautiful place, i would be driving slower than usual! save yourself the stress and give yourself 5 extra minutes to get to where ever it is...all the while trying to recall how you first felt when you looked through eyes of wonder at such beautiful sights!
i spent years traveling from medford to brookings with my grands, each trip bringing new sights that i didn't catch the last trip.
ah, the woes of an oregonian :)
Iusedtolive in touristic place. We planned our activities outside heavy periods. Inconvenient,yes, but those tourists kept our poeple at work.
It is a magnificent coast. Only once, have I driven from San Francisco to Seattle, hugging the coastline as much as possible. It was absolutely spectacular ( and very slow ) all the way. Usually, I am on I-5.
Ha! Double edged sword, isn't it Rosaria? It happens here too. I laugh, even in the store I work at people standing in the aisles as though they have forgotten what aisles are for, as though they forget the nature of movement itself. I think scientifically, the bloodstream slows down. I think the flotsom jetsom is in a slow swirl. I think it must affect the head. And yet they keep our economy vital enough but my oh my, September looks sweet!
xo
erin
We know all about gawkers. We live in a tourist region, too. In July we are expecting a waterboard competition on Bull Shoals Lake which will bring in 2-3000 persons. In two counties there are only 1800 motel/resort room, camping spots, etc.
It will be a mess, but the economy surely can use the boost.
I never did stop by and thank you for becoming a follower. Oops. I did want to do that and to tell you that it made my day. Happy Memorial Day to you and yours.
Gawking ~ to be sure! You need a few little 'round-abouts' to help with that congestion.
I plan on catching up with the chapters of your life during my lazy summer days .....
Enjoy your summer, Rosaria.
Oh Gosh, Gee-Whiz, I forgot my manners: Do come! Yes, we love you gawkers!
When we first retired here, we spent days, literally fifteen hours sitting on the deck gawking, with few breaks to use the restroom, get a bite to eat, wrap a blanket around our chilly bodies. Tourists marvel, as they should, at all this beauty.
Lucky us!
Thanks for gawking with me!
I love your photographs. They're beautiful. My father was born 1907 in Union, Oregon, and grew up in LeGrande. Where is that to you?
Thanks for commenting on my blog about my memoir. I posted a reply.
We travelled 101 last fall on our road trip. It is impossible not to gawk! That is such a beautiful drive!
America is so huge (sigh!) I didn't even know Oregon was by the sea! I would love to visit again - only been to Chicago circa 1983, when I had a cousin out there.
South Fla in the winter suffers the same problems. Welcome to paradise.
I feel your pain. I am one of those tourists who visits the western part of our beautiful state whenever I can. During the high season we rent a room on the ocean front and we walk everywhere our entire visit.
My favorite time to visit is in January, off season. How lucky you are to enjoy it year-round.
Here in my small California town, with all the wineries along our scenic highways, traffic gets heavy with tipsy wine "tasters." Three times a year wine festivals draw thousands, and every summer weekend the roads are packed with tourists heading for our lakes and coastal towns.
Our beautiful area offers a lot for people tired of LA, SF, and the hot inland valleys. It's so good for our economy. But we have to be careful with our driving; accidents around here are often fatal because people drive so fast through the beautiful countryside.
There's a price to be paid for living in paradise.
sorry....you got me....i'm a gawker :)
I know what you mean! It's kinda like during one of our big festivals, when we have an extra 200,000 people in town. Total gridlock, but at least it's only for a few days. Beautiful view!
I pray for safer streets for all this summer.
Your photo is captivating. I wanna gawk.
Hope you are doing well.
I like a qawk as well ;-)
Wizz
As usual I have to say your blogs are helpful for me. You have a way of making the ordinary special and I love it. Thanks. PolarBear
You live in a beautiful part of the world so people come to look. We also live a couple of miles from a Civil War park and a mountain. People come every day to hike up the mountain, and on many week-ends they close the road altogether for things like March of Dimes, Cancer walk, and so on. We know those walks are for a good cause, but they are always on our road and we have to travel all over the county to get off our road. Sometimes we’ll get a notice in our mail box that our road will be closed where we live and we should not come out of our house from say 9 am to 11:00 am on Saturday. Once I had a doctor’s appointment and had to park my car a mile away the night before so I could get to the appointment! I complained but was told that this was the nicest area around Atlanta and good for hikers, causes and tourists. I even made a post on my road, in two parts (http://avagabonde.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-road-in-cobb-county-ga-part-2-of-2.html.)
I can see why the tourists want to gawk-it's breathtaking.
It is an amazing state is it not? I'm in the Willamette Valley and have been here for 10 years now. I found your blog by chance and had intended only to say hello before moving on. I, instead, began reading your prior posts and stayed much longer than I planned. I'll be back! I hope you are having a wonderful day. Blessings...Mary
I found this post funny...I know it's irritating. It's the same with human traffic. When I used to live in London, there were so many tourists, and all I ever wanted to do was go to work and it was tedious trying to avoid them. Tourists walk on all sides of the road and London's more complicated cause everything is on the left side.
I hope you had a lovely weekend!
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