https://www.facebook.com/938071036047421/

PNW Escapes, Seal Rock, OR (2026)

09/10/2026

🫐 Asking someone where they pick huckleberries is a little like asking for their banking password.

It just isn’t done.

Same with mushroom foraging. Secret spots are passed down through generations. Relationships are made or broken on the sacred covenant of protecting the location of berries sometimes only slightly larger than a BB.

And right now is prime time.

Here in the Northwest, you’ll hear plenty of opinions about mountain-grown huckleberries versus the coastal varieties. Aficionados have their favorites, and I’m not getting between them.

But if you’re heading into the woods to pick your own, there are a few things worth knowing.

Huckleberry picking can be slow going, so bring a bucket or baggies for your berries. And remember, you aren’t the only one who likes huckleberries. Bears do too. Carry bear spray where appropriate, know how to use it and pay attention to what’s around you.

More importantly, don’t assume you can’t get lost because you’re “just picking berries.” Wandering from bush to bush with your eyes on the ground is a remarkably effective way to lose track of where you came from.

Carry bright trail tape and mark your route as you meander. Use it sparingly and retrieve every piece on your way out. A few markers are considerably more appealing than spending the night in the woods waiting for a search team.

And carry a small backpack for the things you hope you won’t need: water, snacks, toilet paper, a knife, an extra layer, a plastic bag for rain protection, a whistle and a flashlight or headlamp. Cell service can be limited or nonexistent, so tell someone where you’re going and when you expect to be back.

Berries in the bucket. Emergency gear on your back. Trail tape gets you back to the car.

Before you pick, check the rules for the land you’re on. Regulations and permits vary by location, and hand-picking is the way to go without damaging the plants.

Just don’t ask me for someone’s secret patch. You'd have better luck getting their banking password. Huckleberries are sacred.

Where do you stand: mountain hucks or coastal?

Over on Kim Roberts, I took the considerably safer approach to huckleberry research. It involved two milkshakes and absolutely no bears.

PNW Escapes

09/10/2026

No, they’re not sea sna*es.

And yes, I’m spelling it that way because I have learned that if you use the actual word on Facebook, your feed may suddenly fill with legless reptiles. No thanks!

They’re eels. If you spend enough time diving the same reefs in Hawaii, eventually some of them become neighbors. Back in the day, they had names. Ed and Edna. Little S**t. Grabber. Wort.

They were among the cast of reef characters we came to recognize from dive to dive. Of course, our crew were characters too!

Hawaii has more than 40 species of moray eel, from zebra and snowflake morays with blunt teeth designed for crushing hard-shelled prey to larger fish-eating morays equipped with an impressive collection of sharp teeth.

They look fierce, especially when they’re sitting in a hole repeatedly opening and closing their mouths. But that open mouth isn’t necessarily a threat. It’s also how a moray moves water across its gills.

Morays are beautifully built for life inside a reef. Long, muscular and streamlined, they can disappear into places where most fish couldn’t begin to fit. During the day you may see nothing more than a head poking from a crevice. At night, they come out to hunt.

And despite all those teeth, most aren’t interested in attacking divers. Give them their space and keep your hands out of their holes.

We know more now than we did back then about how our behavior affects wildlife, and feeding reef animals is something I wouldn’t encourage today.

Calling them by name? No regrets.

There’s a story about Wort at Kim Roberts.

Photos by Blain Roberts

09/10/2026

🍋 When life hands you lemons, ask ChatGPT where to find the huckleberry milkshakes.

We hadn’t planned on discovering hidden gems in Hood River this week. We were there while our beloved dog Mira had surgery, and with hours to wait, our choices were pretty simple: sit in the parking lot and worry or go exploring.

So I asked ChatGPT for some easy distractions from what was a stressful day.

We visited the Bonneville Fish Hatchery and dam, walked the riverfront and conducted some important huckleberry milkshake research.

We didn’t exactly make lemonade out of lemons. We didn’t even make lemon drops.

But those huckleberry shakes were pretty great.

Chat knows I love the odd places, too. Alas, there was no giant ball of tw**e to be found. Maybe next time.

And there will be a next time. We’ll be back in six weeks to fix Mira’s other knee, and there are still plenty of places left to discover. The Dalles Dam and the Western Antique Aeroplane & Automobile Museum are already on the list.

I’ll share more about the places we found this week, including the deets you need to find them yourself.

Have you ever stumbled onto a great place simply because life sent you somewhere you hadn’t planned to go?

Over on Kim Roberts, I’m sharing why this particular trip changed the way I think about using AI.

PNW Escapes

09/09/2026

🐋 How does a 70-foot blue whale end up on display in Newport?

And how could something that big be surprisingly easy to miss?

The blue whale skeleton at the Hatfield Marine Science Center is tucked between the tsunami evacuation ramp and the building’s back courtyard. Which seems like an awfully discreet place to keep the largest animal ever known to have lived on Earth.

He was an adult male blue whale that washed ashore near Ophir, Oregon, in November 2015. Scientists determined that he had been struck by a ship.

Getting him from a beach to a permanent display was not exactly a weekend project. His bones spent years being cleaned and prepared, including time submerged in Yaquina Bay where nature’s own cleanup crew helped do some of the work.

Today, those bones weigh about 5,500 pounds. And you can walk right underneath them.

A few deets if you want to find him:

🐋 Hatfield Marine Science Center is in South Beach, just across Yaquina Bay from downtown Newport. The skeleton outside is free to visit, and parking is available at Hatfield. But go inside too. Admission to the Visitor Center is just $5—one of the best deals in town.

🐋 Look behind the Gladys Valley Marine Studies Building, between the back courtyard and the tsunami evacuation ramp. He’s easier to miss than you’d think.

🐋 While you’re there, walk up the tsunami evacuation ramp. The roof is part of Newport’s vertical evacuation system and gives you a completely different view of Yaquina Bay and the bridge.

The scale is difficult to appreciate in a photograph. Stand underneath those ribs and try to imagine the animal that carried them through the ocean.

Over on Kim Roberts Roberts, I went down a rabbit hole involving Moby Dick, a megalodon and just how high this guy could blow.

Have you ever seen a blue whale in the wild?

PNW Escapes

09/08/2026

🍂 Sometimes the best little escapes are hiding right in town.

Spring Lake is one of my favorite little disappearing acts on the Oregon Coast.

Tucked right into Lincoln City, this 25-acre open space wraps a network of trails around a shallow lake. Within minutes, you’re walking under towering evergreens through ferns, moss and enough shades of green to make you forget there are houses and streets nearby.

And fall may be my favorite time to walk it.

The recent rain wakes everything up. Moss practically glows. Mushrooms start appearing. The trail smells like wet earth and cedar, while little flashes of red and gold remind you that even an evergreen forest knows what season it is.

The lake itself is quiet and surprisingly wild. This is part of the Pacific Flyway, and you might spot Canada geese, great blue herons, Pacific wrens and plenty of other visitors passing through.

This isn't a hike you do for a summit or a sweeping ocean view.

You do it because sometimes you want to walk into the woods, circle a lake, look for birds and mushrooms, and come back out feeling like you went somewhere.

🥾 THE DEETS

• Trail: Up to 1.5 miles, loop
• Difficulty: Moderate, with roots, natural surfaces and sections that can get muddy
• Parking: Paved parking at the trailhead off NE Port Avenue, with limited parking along NE 14th Street
• Dogs: Welcome on leash
• Restrooms: None at the trailhead
• Accessibility: I found about a quarter mile of flat, paved, wheelchair-accessible trail from the trailhead

There are still some beautiful walking days ahead, and I’m taking them.

You can see why coiling the hoses can wait at Kim Roberts.

What trail do you want to walk before winter rolls into town?

PNW Escapes

09/07/2026

🍷 How do you get from an old-fashioned berry dessert to Bigfoot's nearly naked wife? It's a surprisingly short trip.

Back when we owned Westport Winery, I wanted to make a fruit-blend w**e. It started with Gewürztraminer and huckleberries. There was just one problem. Nobody could say Gewürztraminer. They'd look at the word and sort of...grunt.

And that reminded me of Huckleberry Grunt, an old-fashioned dessert my sister's mother-in-law used to make. At the time, each of our w**es benefited a local charity. This one supported Ducks Unlimited.

Ducks. Huckleberries. Grunt.

Duckleberry Grunt was born.

And it went absolutely nuts. It became our most popular creation, bar none. We even wrapped the bottles in camouflage tissue so you could hide them from your friends.

Eventually the w**e evolved into a Riesling and blueberry blend, in no small part because huckleberries are expensive. I've recently been reminded just how expensive.

Everyone and their weird uncle has a Bigfoot story or photo. But no one ever talks about Bigfoot's wife.

Jill Neal fixed that. We commissioned her to create the Duckleberry Grunt label, featuring Mrs. Bigfoot stomping duckleberries in a camo T-back and a Bigfoot tramp stamp.

And that is how magic is made.

Over on Kim Roberts, I'm making the actual Huckleberry Grunt that started all this—with huckleberries purchased from a van along the road for roughly the price of a gently used kidney and half a pack of old hamburger buns.

PNW Escapes

09/07/2026

🌸 The photos tell you why to grow dahlias.

They’re ridiculous.

Flowers the size of a small dog. Colors that cause stress at Crayola. Some look like tidy origami pom-poms. Others like sea anemones on steroids.

But there are a FEW challenges.

🐌 Slugs and snails love them in an unholy way. Move over, hostas.

Their tubers can rot in soggy soil. Think lavender.

Some of those enormous beauties need staking. I like interplanting tall flowers with sturdy neighbors that can lend a little support. Less work for me.

And then there’s winter. ❄️

After frost kills the tops, you dig the tubers and store them somewhere dark and above freezing, but not warm. That’s mostly every garage in the Northwest.

In warmer areas, you can leave them in the ground if you can keep them from sitting wet all winter.

The actual growing part isn’t terribly complicated. Plant the tubers in spring when the soil reaches about 60 degrees, give them six hours or more of sun and—here’s the weird part—don’t water them right away. Wait until the first leaves appear.

Then apparently stand back. 🧍‍♂️

Because one tuber can produce a plant loaded with those ridiculous flowers from summer into fall.

At Kim Roberts you can see why I stopped at Old House Dahlias near Tillamook.

Do you dally with dahlias? What’s your advice?

09/07/2026

🌊 Why is it called Hug Point?

Long before Highway 101, the beach itself served as the road along stretches of the Oregon coast.

That presented a problem here since Hug Point stuck out into the ocean, and travelers had to time the tide and stay tight against the rocks to get around it.

And apparently they really meant hug.

Before there was a road, hand- and footholds were cut into the rock to help people negotiate the headland. Mail carriers were making the difficult trip past Hug Point by the 1880s.

Then, in 1910, Clatsop County hired a contractor and crew to cut a road right into the rock.

Wagons used it. Stagecoaches used it. Eventually cars used it. More than a century later, we still can.

The old road is right there on the beach, complete with wheel ruts worn into the rock. Eventually Highway 101 made this little stretch of roadway obsolete, but thankfully nobody erased it.

Hug Point State Recreation Site is about five miles south of Cannon Beach. Beach access recently reopened after being closed for nearly ten months.

One important detail: check the tide before exploring around the point. The route can become impassable as the tide comes in.

Over on Kim Roberts, I have the less historical explanation for why seeing an OPEN parking lot nearly left skid msrks on Highway 101.

Have you ever walked on the old road at Hug Point?

09/06/2026

🔥 Three years.

An old friend from Lahaina stayed with us last week. She lost her condo in Lahaina's August 2023 fire. Three years later, there’s still no rebuild in sight.

She’s spent much of that time moving around the mainland, reconnecting with other former Lahaina residents scattered across the country. Now, she’s heading back to Maui.

Three years is a long time to be displaced.

We tend to measure disasters in acres burned, homes destroyed and lives lost. Then the fire goes out, the news crews leave and most of us move on. The people who lost their homes don't.

Tomorrow marks six years since the September 2020 Echo Mountain Complex Fire tore through Otis, destroying hundreds of homes. Some of our neighbors are still working to rebuild, fighting their way through a bureaucracy that seems designed to make recovery harder instead of easier.

That's worth remembering in the Pacific Northwest.

The fire may last days. Recovery can take years. The resultant PTS embeds.

Despite this the human spirit prevails. Over on Kim Roberts, our friend and Blain spent part of her visit doing what old Lahaina Harbor people do. Talking story.

After forty years, apparently even the old stories aren't quite the same stories.

PNW Escapes

09/06/2026

🐄 If you’re in Cannon Beach at noon on the first Wednesday of the month and hear cattle mooing from the sky, don’t panic.

Cannon Beach calls its tsunami warning system COWS — Coastal Outside Warning System — and mooing is part of the monthly test.

Funny? Absolutely. The reason isn’t.

If you feel a strong or long earthquake on the coast, Drop, Cover and Hold On. When the shaking stops, head inland and uphill.

Don’t wait for the cows.

Plan on walking. Roads may be damaged or jammed. Know your evacuation route before you need it.

And “coast” doesn’t necessarily mean beachfront. Even seemingly inland towns like Aberdeen and Tillamook have tsunami hazard zones. Tsunamis can travel into bays, estuaries and rivers.

Know where your tsunami evacuation zone ends before you need it.

Keep a backpack ready with medications and essentials for your family and pets. Keep emergency supplies in your car and extra at home if you live on high ground.

And remember, tsunamis come in a series. The first wave may not be the largest. Don’t return until officials give the all-clear.

Washington and Oregon are among the most beautiful coastlines in the world.

Know which way is up.

Do you know your tsunami evacuation route?

Over on Kim Roberts, I’ll show you why I actually have a favorite one.

PNW Escapes

PNW Escapes

09/10/2026

09/10/2026

09/10/2026

09/09/2026

09/08/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/07/2026

09/06/2026

09/06/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Shortcuts

Share

Listing takedown request