(Seal Rock, Oregon) - A little bit north of Yachats, and a tad south of Newport, the central Oregon coast hosts a kind of wild card of geologic oddities. Surreal and yet serene, this beachy oddball is more than just scenic eye candy.

A variety of grooves and intriguing shapes inhabit this fun and funky half-circle that is the beach of Seal Rock and Seal Rock State Recreational Site. While the towering semi-sea stack of Elephant Rock and a handful of basalt blobs of varying degrees of jaggedness stand in the tide, as if they're purposefully keeping it at bay, other smaller curiosities poke out of the sand – given the right conditions.

One looks like an egg that has fallen apart – a curious roundish shape that is broken now. Perhaps the basalt actually formed a big bubble at one time when the lava that made it had a really large pocket of air? Or perhaps it was simply a structure rounded out over time, then cracked and hollowed out by the tide until it reached this shape. It's the kind of question only a geologist could answer.