OREGON COAST

Don't forget, you can double click the pics to make them larger!

Sept 5th we pointed the RV toward the Oregon coast.  We were moving to Sunset Bay State Park, which is between Bandon to the South & Coos Bay to the North.

Coos Bay

So far, we’ve been impressed with Oregon’s State Parks.  They have full hookups (water, sewer & electric) and they can accommodate an RV the size of ours.  One couple of our RV friends, Dee & Jim, would hate it.  It’s actually like camping!!. There are a lot of trees & bushes here & most of the sites are somewhat private.  A lot of people actually “camp in tents”.  This kind of surprises me because the weather isn’t all that great.  It’s been in the 60’s during the day & the 40’s at night.  In addition to that, we’ve had no sun, except yesterday & you get a very heavy mist at night.  I think it even rained some last night.  We lucked out & actually got our satellite to work! We decided to check it out before we set up & found if we moved the RV back, just a little, it would connect!  However, we’ve had no phone or wifi service here, so once again, we take the computers when we go out!

Yurts are very popular here.  There are quite a few in this campground.

They’re basically a round tent on a platform.  They have skylite domes, & flapped & screened windows.  They come with some kind of beds & electric & a few other basics.  I don’t know if these have water, many don’t.  I’d take them over a tent any day!
We’ve done a little sightseeing while here.  The towns around here are mostly fishing towns so there isn’t a lot to see.  The other day we drove to one of the parks down the street that is really an arboretum. 

We’ve missed a lot of the flowers, especially the rhododendrons, but the Dahlias were in full bloom & spectacular.  Some are the size of dinner plates & the colors are outstanding!

They also had a lot of roses & most of them were still blooming.  They were so pretty, but unfortunately, most had little or no fragrance.

We also took a walk down to the beach where you could see, and hear, thousands of seals & sea lions.  Unfortunately, they were in the water or on the rocks of the outer islands, so we couldn’t see them up close.
Friday the 7th was my birthday, & unknown to me, Paula, our daughter, had asked Collins to pick up some flowers for me.  Poor girl, she tried so hard to have them delivered to me, but that was an impossible task.  Anyway, Collins was her courier & they were beautiful & appreciated!

We went out for dinner that evening, which we don’t do often.  Most of the time, it’s lunch out while we’re sightseeing.  For my wine connoisseur friends & family you’ll cringe when I tell you this.  The restaurant had a little thing on the table mentioning on Oregon made Cranberry Wine.  They had several different blends & the waitress said I was welcome to taste whichever I wanted.  I tried the Cranberry Raspberry, which I found delicious!    It’s actually an award winning wine.  The next day, we went to the Cranberry Festival in a small town named Bandon & bought several bottles.  Bandon is another small fishing town & we enjoyed wandering thru their downtown.  We watched a couple of guys carving with chain saws.  That is really an amazing art!! 
                                               

Chain Saw Carving

Finished Products

They had plenty of cranberry food items & I settled on a cranberry oatmeal cookie, which was delicious.   It was a fun way to spend a day. 



There is a small stretch of beach across the street, so yesterday the dog & I went for a walk.  There are some tide pools there.  It was low tide so I was hoping to see some tide pool creatures.  Altho the area was interesting, no creatures were to be seen.  Since the sun had decided to appear for the first time since we’ve been here, we enjoyed our walk.

There are lots of wild blackberry bushes here.  We’ve probably picked a couple of gallons of them.  I had taken the dog for a walk one day & when I got back, Collins was coming back from picking a huge bowl full.  It was overflowing, but I took some out for our morning cereal before I took the picture.









Tues,Sept 11 we moved on a little further up the coast to Beverly Beach State Park, which is just outside Newport.  The drive here was so beautiful.  The Oregon coastline is probably the most beautiful we’ve seen.  There are lots of rocky cliffs & wide stretches of sand.  When you’re driving the RV you really can’t do too much sightseeing so we decided we would drive back & really check it out.  I thought the dunes extended closer to Newport, so we didn’t stop along the way.  I realized after it was too late, they didn’t come this far & we really didn’t want to drive back to take a look.  If we’d know better, we would have stopped along the way. 
      

 

     
     

The park is very nice, but you definitely feel like you’re “camping“ here, too.  There are about 250 RV, tent & Yurt sites here.  There are a lot of trees &  no TV again.
      

We’re here for 10 days, so we’ll get lots of reading done.  Collins & I like to play a dice game called “Farkle”, so I’m sure we’ll have time for some of that.  We do get internet & phone, but it’s not the greatest!  The weather here is pretty consistent – mid to upper 50’s in the day (even some sun a few of the days) & low 50’s at night.  It doesn’t feel too bad because it hasn’t been windy.
One of the sunny days, we took our bikes over to the beach.  The dog likes to run in the sand.  She runs ahead for a little ways, then stops to make sure we’re foll  owing.  There was a creek from the campground that ran to the ocean.  We hopped across it when we were close to ocean, but when we came back we had walked higher up on the sand & the creek was much wider.  We found a log to go across.  Collins went first, no problem.  Me, forgetting how uncoordinated I am, picked up the dog & started across.  Of course, I lost my balance, dropped the dog & landed in the water, which wouldn’t have been bad, except that my foot got caught in the rocks, I twisted my ankle & landed totally in the water.  It would have been pretty funny, except that I hit one leg on the rocks, which brought about huge swollen bumps because my veins are very close to the surface & of course my foot was stuck & twisted.  Luckily, all I did was sprain my ankle, which looked like it belonged to an elephant for several days & had plenty of bruises on the other leg.  I really should have known better. 
Mostly, we’ve just been enjoying the coast & the small towns around here.  The day we drove back to see some of the coastline, we stopped in a couple of the towns.  One had a farmers/flea market going on, we bought some produce but also had to sample some of the local baked goods.  We also went to some little shops along the Newport Bay.  There were tons of Sea Lions there.  Some of them looked like they were posing for us.  There is a big rock in the bay where they like to stay during the day.  You can hardly tell the sea lions from the rocks.

      

We took a trip to Tillamook to check out the cheese factory.  The drive there was very scenic, we even saw some “elk crossing” signs, but no elk.  I was a little disappointed in the Cheese Factory itself.  We did get to see some of the packing going on, but that was about it.  Tillamook is very well known for its Cheddar Cheese, but they make all kinds, plus ice cream & butter. 

      

We also checked out Yaquina Headland.  There is a lighthouse there, which we didn’t go into, but we did see some gray whales, which tend to be in this area year round.  We also walked down to the tidepools, but didn’t really see any critters.  We did see some harbor seals on the rocks, there were several large ones on one rock & their pups were on another.



Harbor Seals & their pups - you really need to enlarge this to see them

       

Whale to the right of the big rock

There were gray whales to the right of the big rock.

This has been a nice park for bike riding & walking, which we’ve done a lot.  At least it’s good exercise for all of us. 
Sept 21 we left the coast & were off to Eugene.  Time for a little routine maintenance on the motorhome.  On the advice of some friends, we spent the weekend at the Armitage County Park Campground.  It was really nice with full hookups, paved pads & grass.  It was also our 27th Wedding Anniversary.  Hard to believe it’s been that many years already!

We decided to go to the their Saturday Market, which is massive & sells most everything one can grow or make at home .

While we have seen occasional pockets of a few hippies throughout California & the lower Oregon coast, today we hit the mother load.  I've included  two pictures of a small fraction of their representation; suffice it to say, it brought back nostalgic days of old.  For the uninformed, those glass things in front of the sitting guy are bongs;  the woman on the right in the second picture is no college student, or hasn't been one for at least 40 years, & is "free dancing" with the music. I suspect she already owns her bong.

   

Traveling has brought about frequent learning days, some historical, some scenic, some, like today, just informative.  The University of Oregon is in Eugene & today they are having a football game with someone or other.  The learning point is, they are called the "Ducks".  So there I am, (Collins)  trying to figure out what group of idiots sat around one day & said:  our team needs a mascot....  lets call them the Ducks, & then everyone else agreed.  That level of thinking goes beyond the water they drank; I'm sure it had to do with prior hippie influence.  Not wanting to take anything as important as this for granted, I asked some of the numerous fans camped around our site about its origin & was told it actually had nothing to do with their smoking choices but rather started with the team being called the "Web Feet" (swear to god).  Then some group of intellectuals decided that name wasn't appealing so, lo & behold they came up with Ducks.  I guess if you think about it long enough, it may be an improvement but hey, it's their school. Now don't you wish you were traveling around learning all this neat stuff?

 Saturday evening we were sitting out having a drink as people were leaving for the game. I (Karen) wanted to say “ Quack, Quack”  as they drove by, but Collins thought that would be inappropriate!  I figured since their team was named the Ducks, that would be the right call,sort of like “good luck” but in the end, I just waved & smiled.

Sept 23rd we moved to what I called “Camp Cummins”.  It was the parking lot of the Cummins repair facility in Eugene.  We decided to go there for some routine maintenance.  They have water & electric hookups for those having RV repair work done.  Since we had to be there at 8AM, which is early for us, we decided to get there Sunday night.  There was one other RV who had spent the weekend there.  Not too long after they took our coach into the repair shop we received a phone call telling us our diesel turbo charger was bad & needed replacing.  There were also a couple of recall issues that would need parts, not available til the next day.  Luckily for us, our Good Sam warranty company covered the Turbo Charger & Monaco covered the recall Items, so we were pretty fortunate when all was said & done.  By Monday night, there were 6 Rv’s at “Camp Cummins” & we met some nice people & picked up some useful information.  RVers are really good at sharing tips with each other.  We also saw a nice "Hippie Bus" come in, and out climbed 3 people with wild tie dye shirts.   I couldn't get my camera fast enough to get their pics!

We ended up spending 3 nites there, but we had water & electric hookups for the RV at night  & their waiting area was comfy.  We did some running during the day & took our bikes to the park.  We were very thankful they found the problems before we had a breakdown on the road.
Sept 26th they finished our repairs & we were off to Prineville Reservoir State Park sort of in the middle of Oregon.  There is a huge reservoir here with a very nice State Park.

Moon on Prineville Reservoir

We were very surprised the first evening we were out walking the dog to see about a dozen deer roaming one of the grassy areas of the park.  I guess they come there every night & they certainly aren’t afraid of people or little dogs.  We had gone for a walk while it was light, but stopped to talk to some people & it got dark.  As we headed back the way we had come, Snuggles went on the grass to potty.  All of a sudden, I looked over to see a deer headed toward her.  I yanked her out of there in a hurry.  They also decided they liked this beautiful plant I’ve been carting around for the past 2 years.  It was getting rather large & I had just said to myself the other day, I needed to trim it some.  Well, the first night we were here, the deer decided to trim it for me – a little more than I had planned.  It still looks ok, but sure isn’t as full on one side as I would have liked.  Now we put it inside at night!

We mainly came here because I wanted to see a place called The Painted Hills.  It’s about an hour from where we’re staying, so we took a drive there yesterday.  As we drove down the cutoff road, we rounded a curve & there was the first colorful hill.  Collins & I both said “Oh my gosh!” at the same time. 

These hills look like someone came in with a paintbrush.  They were formed by Volcanic Ash & erosion & I have to say, they were amazing.  We both agreed that was well worth the trip.  These pictures do them not justice.



We also made a side trip to a place called Smith Rock State Park.  I had read somewhere it was popular with climbers.  It wasn’t real far, so we decided to take a ride. 

Smith Rock & The Crooked River



The rocks are pretty as you drive into the park.  We got there late in the day & saw quite a few groups who had finished climbing.  When we looked carefully, we could see quite a few still climbing & a few at the top itself.  Not something I would want to do, but I give them credit.  It wasn’t as impressive as the painted hills, but we did enjoy the visit.

This is the one most of them were climbing

As usual, I have my odd pics of weird trees & strange signs. 

This sign we saw along the coast of OR.  I finally asked one of the park rangers what that was all about.  He said those were the areas that weren't high enough for you to remain if a Tsunami was coming.  Of course, you can imagine the chaos you'd have if there were an actual warning.  And, most of the time, there isn't enough time to go far.

Here are my weird trees for this trip.

They called this an octopus tree

Tomorrow we're moving to a place along the border of Oregon & Washington.  It's the Columbia River Gorge.  More updates later!!