Alder Dunes trail hike and visit Darlingtonia reserve near Florence, Oregon

There is a network of trails in the sand dunes near the beach north of Florence, and most of the trails do not have much of a view of the ocean or beach, but are interesting to walk through to see how expansive they are. We visited one of those campgrounds with a trail near it, and then afterward stopped at the preservation site for Darlingtonia, just a mile or two south of there.

The trails wind through the forest near the ocean, just a mile or two in from the beach.

The trailhead is near a campsite just off highway 101 in the Siuslaw national forest.

When I hiked this trail it was a warm day, in the upper 70's withthout a breeze, and just a bit warm for hiking.

Pearl, Sandi and I hiked for about one hour, and were feeling hungry, so we stopped and had lunch back in Florence after we visited the Darlintonia preservation site.

The trail in pretty flat in elevation as you might imagine near the beach, so it's not a too hard of a hike from an elevation gain perspective.

The distance is only about 1.5 miles round trip from the trailhead, so it's a nice hike that you can do in a short afternoon hike.

The trail for the most part is in extremely good shape and very well maintained.

All in all it was a very pleasant hike, except that I don't like walking through sand, but I would recommend it to anybody who wants to walk through sand.

We only saw a couple people along the way, but then it was a weekday, and I suppose the traffic on the trail increases on the weekend days.