I set an alarm for sunrise and walked down to the beach before anyone else arrived. Haystack Rock in the early morning light — the sun coming in from the east, raking across the face of the rock and catching the wave crests — is exactly what you came to Cannon Beach for. I had the ZV1 and the Osmo and debated briefly whether to just take a walk without any of it. Then I remembered I’m here for one day making travel videos, and the debate resolved itself.
There was a man on the beach with what I initially thought was a camera on a very long lens. It was a spotting scope. He had it trained on the rock and the moment I got close enough to look through it I saw a puffin. Black body, distinctive face, riding the air in a way that looked like it shouldn’t work aerodynamically. I have been watching birds my entire life and had never seen a puffin. I was not going to walk past this man without stopping.
He explained that four bald eagles had been sitting on top of the rock the day before, which had cleared every other bird out. The puffins were starting to come back. Over a hundred of them nesting on the rock now, down from about five hundred in past years. There’s a man, he told me, who sits in a chair out here and counts them — a system, a grid, the whole operation. A puffin man. I filed this away as one of the more specific job titles I’d encountered.
The light was grazing. I was trying to watch where I was pointing the camera while also looking at puffins. I need better systems for that.
The Tidal Pool Situation
I’d been looking forward to exploring the tidal pools at Haystack at low tide. I’d done it before at a quieter stretch of the Oregon coast south of here, around Gold Beach, and found the experience completely absorbing — by yourself, no one telling you where to stand, the pools full of anemones and small crabs and whatever else survives in that intertidal zone.
What I found at Haystack at low tide was field trip time. Eighty-seven signs. Roped-off areas. A crowd of kids that I don’t begrudge at all — teaching kids about tidal ecosystems is great — but that arrived precisely when I did and made the experience rather different from the quiet exploration I’d had in mind.
I admitted at the time that I sounded like a cynical Anthony Bourdain, and I stand by that self-assessment. It’s a beautiful place. It just requires the right timing. Early. Before the buses. That’s the lesson and I’m keeping it.
Tillamook
The Tillamook Cheese Factory is one of those places I’ve driven past multiple times on the Oregon coast and never stopped. I stopped. The cheese is creamier than the Tillamook you find in Florida grocery stores, which the people at the counter confirmed with the confidence of professionals. The museum is free. The samples are free. The jokes about this being the cheesiest museum I’ve ever visited are too easy and I’m going to make one anyway and move on.
Portland
I’m going to be honest about Portland the way I was honest about the tidal pools.
I walked out the front door of the Sesta hotel — big room, nice welcome cookie, city traffic on the way in that I did not enjoy — and immediately saw a man running down the street with blood on his face looking like he’d lost an argument with something significant. This was within thirty seconds of stepping outside.
I went looking for a camera strap at a camera store. I had Italian dinner. I walked back. I am not in love with this city. I haven’t been for a while and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Portland has taken a direction in recent years that doesn’t suit it, in my opinion. That’s just my opinion. I’m not the first person to say it and won’t be the last.
I had ChatGPT generate some images of Portland based on how I experienced it that evening. They were vivid. They were exaggerated. They’re going in the video anyway because they told the truth about a feeling even if they didn’t tell the truth about a street corner.
Travel Con
The conference welcome session was the main reason I’m in Portland at all. The evening session covered content creation, SEO, monetization — and within about twenty minutes I understood clearly that I’ve been doing most of it wrong. I need to write with more purpose. I need to write more and rely on AI less. I knew some version of that already and the session made it specific.
Good information. Expensive dinner to go with it. More conference tomorrow.
