Cook's Harbor

Over the weekend, we visited Cook's Harbor, a natural rocky bay along the Oregon Coast.  It's one of Oregon's few natural basalt harbors to survive recent storm surge poundings in the last fifty years.

Captain Cook discovered the harbor during his Oregon stop-over before visiting the Hawaiian Islands, unfortunately, the harbor was too shallow to provide a safe anchoring point for his ship.

Locals tell stories about smugglers' caves at Cook's Harbor, but I wasn't able to see any obvious signs of a cache.  Maybe if the tide had been different, I would have been able to see features normally under water.

In the fifties, there used to be mermaid sightings, and the local historical museum had some brochures from back then which featured "Triton, The King of the Merfolk."  The illustration was sort of Greek statue meets Buster Crabbe.   Inside was a black-and-white photo of a 1950's woman named Helen Elden, holding a clear-ish triangular object with rounded edges which was supposedly a scale from her aquatic boyfriend.  The museum write-up pointed out how most of the sitings of Triton were by women, and eventually they were written off as "Fisherwife Fever" or an advertisement stunt by a local motel (now destroyed after the Columbus Day storm).

On a warm night after a very sunny day, I could easily imagine merguys lounging around in the warm waters.