A short trip to the coast on some fine but cold days. My wife had us stay in Cannon Beach, but we spent a couple of hours exploring some new (to us) walking possibilities near Manzanita.
The Nehalem River Dike runs north on the east bank of the river from the Highway 101 bridge at Nehalem. It’s a decent birdwatching walk (goldeneyes, grebes, herons, geese, etc.) passing pastures and a sewage treatment plant. The highlight is really at the beginning, where you get a magnificent panorama of north Coast Range peaks: Rock Mountain, Angora Peak, West Onion Peak, Onion Peak, Kidders Butte, Sugarloaf Mountain, Saddle Mountain, and Humbug Mountain. I had thought the walk would carry on for longer, but someone has strung a makeshift fence across the dike, with fence panels joined by small lengths of cord. In a pasture up ahead were lots of cows and an elk herd grazing peacefully.
We also explored a walk, just under four miles, that began off Tohl Road, just east of Manzanita. The land is managed by the Lower Nehalem Community Trust, and the main trail follows a grassy vehicle track through dense spruce, maple, and alder woods. At breaks in the vegetation, there were good views north to Rock Mountain and Neahkahnie Mountain. We crossed Alder Creek on a footbridge and came to a signed junction. Here we took the first of two much brushier, rooty loops. Actually the brush, mainly evergreen huckleberry and salal, is well trimmed back, and the first loop followed a narrow old dike around to rejoin the vehicle track below a new gated development called Nehalem Point.
In short order, we came to the end of a paved road, part of the Nehalem Point development, where new houses are being constructed along a low ridge that shows as Dean Point on topo maps. After this, a second loop leads off the track but, at the edge of the estuary, we came to such a jumble of driftwood that we turned back. We followed the track to its end at Dean Point, getting views across the wide Nehalem River to estuary islands and the town of Wheeler. Turning back, we attempted the second loop from the other direction. A local birdwatcher pointed out a couple of bald eagles atop a tall spruce. We walked the narrow dike through hedges of salal, but turned back where the high tide was swamping the trail.