Oregon Coast in 2011: Most Memorable Photos of Manzanita, Wheeler, Rockaway

Published 12/29/2011

(Manzanita, Oregon) – About 15 minutes south of Cannon Beach you'll find the Nehalem Bay area, with its viewpoints and the towns of Manzanita, Rockaway, Nehalem and Wheeler. Some extraordinary moments from this area were captured by Oregon Coast Beach Connection cameras.

The tricks of light that play above Manzanita, at those soaring overlooks, are much of the fun of the Nehalem Bay area. It's not simply about the massive, majestic views. Spring always brings the wildest cloud conditions, such as here at dusk, where an opening in the skies allows a strange, wispy shaft of pink light to surround a boat.

More tricks of light happen up here at night, such as this esoteric experiment created by a variety of conditions, including fog.

Also on the same night, looking the other direction on the overlooks, the moon peeks out. These two caused quite a stir on Oregon Coast Beach Connection's Facebook page this year. Sometimes half the fun of a photograph is ripping away all semblance of reality.

Weather played a big part of the stunning sights in 2011. An interesting cloud layer continually hovered offshore during this summer's warmer-than-usual Oregon coast conditions, and it often did some mesmerizing things with the sunlight, especially at dusk.

Here, you can see the same cloud formation straight out to the west.

On the ground at Manzanita, late spring had some beautiful blue skies to play with – visually.

Just this past month, during that wild dry and calm spell of December, Manzanita looked like this.

Nighttime, however, resulted in one of these crowd favorites at the Oregon Coast Beach Connection FB page: the entire galaxy spinning around above the beach and Neahkahnie Mountain.

Nearby, Wheeler was no shirker to astounding delights – especially on the bay in this late spring shot.

Early winter provided this stunning and surreal shot of Wheeler, where you could see both the fog layer smothering the town and the clear skies, full of stars, above it.

At Rockaway Beach, the year began with the astounding sight of a shipwreck that hadn't seen the light of day in 50 years. The Emily G. Reed crashed here early in the century, but its bones were largely covered up by sand by the 50's. Its latest appearance was over by the first week in January.

Another crowd favorite on the Oregon Coast Beach Connection FB page was this striking shot of a sunny day in Rockaway Beach, in early summer.

This wild night shot of Rockaway Beach and Twin Rocks was the result of hours of freezing temperatures and hiding in the car to keep warm, while the camera took 10 to 15 minutes per shot to get these photos.

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