I’m off on a quick jaunt to the Oregon coast range this week. It’s very close to home, and I even used to live closer, but I’ve never explored this area.

I’m staying at a city park in the small town of Vernonia called Anderson Park. It has a cluster of RV sites as you enter, and a sprawling lawn edged by the Nehalem River for tent sites. You drive across the grass to your camping spot. I was really hesitant, since that’s usually a big no-no, but the host said that’s how it’s done.

The park is only a few blocks from the cute downtown, but as I was checking in the host said, “Don’t go downtown, this place is thick with Covid.” That made me laugh, but I also didn’t go downtown!

There is a pretty trail from the campground that crosses the river and makes a loop around Nehalem Lake, a former log pond.

The trail accesses a historic sawmill built by Oregon-American Lumber Company in 1923. It was abandoned in 1957 and since then has become a hulking shell completely covered with elaborate graffiti art.

The mill has quite a history! Vernonia was one of the film locations for Ring of Fire, an obscure 1961 melodrama about a gallant sheriff who saves the residents of a small village from a forest fire. Part of the defunct mill was actually set on fire for one of the scenes, sending it out in a literal blaze of glory.

The graffitied ruins feel like a cathedral.

The hulking graffitied fuel shed obtained some niche fame when Green Day filmed part of the music video for the song “Still Breathing” inside the ruin.

I thought the colors and patterns of this backlit web at sunset were so pretty.