Neahkahnie Mountain

Over the weekend, Dan and I went hiking on Neakahnie Mountain, near Manzanita, OR. Neah-Kah-Nie means "The place of the supreme diety," which gives it a mysterious feel in my head. And it felt sort of eerie climbing up, too. We were there on a crazy misty day, just a couple days after all the wild storms that hit the west coast last week, and we were the only ones on the trails. Everything was muffled and foggy, and we had to climb basically through the branches of some trees that had fallen across the trail and hadn't yet been cleared. The mountain is about 1600 feet above the beach. Even in the mist, it was still pretty spectacular. As we sat on the top of the mountain eating our lunch, the clouds would occasionally thin ever-so-slightly. When they did, we could just see the scallopped edge of the waves on the beach far below. I imagine on a clear day the view is mind-blowing. None of my pictures really turned out all that well. They're all either oddly bright blue or washed-out grey. I like this one, though -- Dan on the top of the mountain, which you get to by scrambling, billy-goat-like, up a slope of jagged rocks.

So freakin' cute!