Backpacking at Ecola State Park, Jan 31st

Without many plans and a good weather forecast for the weekend, we decided to do a backpacking trip to Ecola State Park. Maybe it wasn’t a true backpacking trip as the hike to the campsite was not that long and we didn’t get to use our tents. But, if sleeping in the woods counts, then yes, this was a backpacking trip. Ecola State park is a portion of land in the Oregon Coast that goes from Cannon Beach all the way north almost to Astoria. This park has a day use area very close to the entrance but there’s also a secondary parking lot at Indian Point where a trail leads north. About a mile and a half in, on a somewhat steep trail, you get to a camping site (which is why we decided to go to Ecola in the first place). This site has three wood shelters with bunk style beds so each shelter can sleep up to four people each. There’s also a fire ring with grill and a covered picnic table. Yes, very rough camping. We got there at around 10AM and started our hike to the campsite which took us a bit less than two hours. After setting up camp and having a light lunch, we continued, without the heavy packs, heading north. Although we were a bit disappointed by this trail, it was a beautiful hike with some nice views of the ocean. The disappointment was because we though we were going to have beach access at some point but that never happened. Even at the end of the trail, we got to a parking lot with some condominiums and no beach access! We returned back to the campsite just in time to go to the viewpoint and enjoy a pretty amazing sunset. This was accompanied by a lot of laughter and some wine which continued into the night. On Sunday we had a nice breakfast and a warm up fire before heading out. Instead of taking the back trail (or road I should say) we took a trail that follows the coast back to the parking lot. Since we got back to the cars roughly at noon, we went for a walk on the beach before heading out. On the way home, just to end the weekend on the right note, we drove to Garibaldi for some nice Fish&Chip. And all this in the middle of the winter!