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Sunday 5th September 2004

Cape DisappointmentA day exploring Cape Disappointment. After a heap of trivialities, such as having to do some laundry (there's a remarkable variation amongst transAm cyclists in their cleanliness - some seem just about never to wash anything at all, either themselves or their clothes, others look like they are permanently freshly luanderied), we went to Waikiki Beach, on the River Columbia side of the headland, and Steve swam. the river water is warmer than the sea - much warmer. It's quite a hearable temperature. I'm a bit puzzled about the sea temperatures - there's a Japanese current coming in which warms things up, and Alaskan current flowing down the coast which cools it all down, and river currents which warm it up. Apparently the sea is warmer as you go offshore into the Japanese current! Cape Disappointment itself is beautiful, a lighthouse on a rocky headland, surrounded by forests, and looking every bit as romantic as its name requires it should. Fortunately it isn't open to the public so it doesn't reveal its romantic secrets to be just a heap of metal and wiring. We ended the day watching the turbulent Columbia crashing into the Pacific waves, this time from the north side of the Columbia, by the heap of rocks that form the north jetty. In the photo, you can see the lighthouse, but in the distance you can see (just about) the north jetty jutting way out into the Pacific, and the Oregon coast beyond that, where we were a couple of days ago. Click on the photo and you'll get a more detailed pcture.

We have a short mpeg video clip (154Kb so OK for 56K modems - ogg available for those that are wise enough to prefer linux and open source), surveying the Pacific Ocean and the Columbia River, with commentary. Quicktime usually defaults to too low a volume - so if that's what you're using, you may need to turn up the volume.


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