oregon coast

Portland has been buried in an unprecedented smoldering wave of intense heat of late. It has been nearly unbearable. To beat it, we decided to hit the Oregon coast for a little relief. Little did we know, whenever the valley is baking the coast becomes shrouded in a thick blanket of fog. And this is precisely what we found when we left the warmth of the coast range and descended to sea level. It rather reminded me of the opening lines of Dicken's Bleak House:

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing my the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little 'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.