It’s a little before 5:00 am on an early January morning in Bandon, Oregon and for some reason I am not up yet; normally an early riser. Equally unusual, my wife is up before me as she claimed because it is too quiet. Anyway, she comes in and announces that it is snowing outside. I lay there for about a minute until the reality of her news hits me and I am up and out of bed in one spirited moment. Do you know how often it snows along the Oregon Coast, in Bandon? Virtually never. We have zero annual snowfall, I mean zero…..Throwing on my clothes, I grab my camera gear, bundled up and ran out the door for the beach. On these rare occasions the snow will not last long so I am frantic to capture whatever precious moment I can.

At the bottom of the trail to the beach I quickly set up my tripod and shoot a number of images of the path leading to Haystack Rock and the Pacific Ocean with the freshly fallen snow on the sand, beach grass and the beach itself. With the heavy snow and gusting wind I had to fight to keep the snow off the front of the lens as I shot away. Rather than stay where I was, I thought I would move closer into town for some of the more iconic rock sea stacks in Bandon. So I hoofed it back to the house, jumped into the car and headed north. Unfortunately, the closer I got to town the less snow there was on the ground. Instead, I made it to the Coquille River Lighthouse where at Bullard’s Beach State Park and the lighthouse I finished off a very rare and exciting morning.