Coastal fog interlude

Wednesday (Aug 20)

Crescent City is only 1.5 hours away, so I spent most of the day with the family, left Eureka about 3:30.

Through the redwoods, past the inlets and estuaries and beaches and rocky cliffs, it’s a pretty darned fine drive.  Got to Mandy’s around 6-ish. We dithered for a while then decided to go shopping and eat. Ended up at the Golden Cafe. Her driveway is very comfortable – level and prefect wifi reception!

Thursday

My impression of Crescent City at night: barking dogs and big trucks.

Morning was quite nice though. There was a big bush in the neighbors yard with little red bell-shaped flowers (fuschia?) all a-bloom and there was a hummingbird going to town on them! So I lay there waking up thinking how cool it was that I could lay in bed and watch hummingbirds!

Said goodbye to Mandy and drove the half hour to breakfast in Brookings.

Yelp showed an interesting place in town, but a truck-stopy cafe on the south end of town. I went there since I got to it first. There were stupidly loud bikers at the next table, but they left half-way through, only to be replaced by stupidly hyperactive trailer kids. Either everybody up here learned their manners in a barn or I’m a little cranky today :)  My omelette was pretty good, but next time through I want to try the in town place.

There’s kind of a campground gap here on this part of the southern coast. The one place I DO want to go someday – Bullards Beach State Park, right next to Bandon – is quite expensive, $26. It has only full hookup RV sites. Most of the other state parks have “tent sites” (no hookups) that are quite a bit cheaper. Anyway, at some point I decided I was going to aim for Eel Creek Campground. Forest Service of course, so I get the Senior deal. It’s always seemed inviting, so today is the day to find out!

By the standards of this trip, if was a pretty looooooooooong drive to get there.

I didn’t quite time my hike perfectly, I headed out just a little too early for sunset, so I got bored on the dunes after a while and headed back. The route was not quite as straightforward as I expected, the way back was 1/2 mile or so of dense coastal forest (very pretty!). Bt the result was that it was too late to head back up for the sunset, and I was probably too tired to do it anyway. It really is good aerobic exercise, trudging over sand dunes.  20 feet wears me out, much less a mile or so, some of it very steep upward.

Everybody seemed to be in party mode there – lots of loud, happy conversations echoing around the otherwise very quiet place.  I think because I could not see their bright lanterns or hear their words clearly it was pleasant rather than annoying.

Friday

Up and on the road about 11:30. There’s a nice little health food market about 20 minutes down the road in Reedsport that had good coffee and good food and wifi last time. I marched in with my entire family of Mac gadgets – Macbook, iPhone, iPad – ordered my coffee and goodie and found that … they no longer had wifi. The owner launched into an angry diatribe about “one bad apple spoiling things for everybody, he had no choice, blah, blah”. I wasn’t quite sure what all that was about, but I was annoyed that my perfect plan to handle all my wifi needs was crashed.

I drank my coffee and went the few blocks to the local cafe that gets good marks (but no wifi).  They were completely full – Reedsport seems to just not work for me – so I ordered fish and chips to go and ate it at the table outside.  That actually worked out pretty well.

It is Friday, so I am in sort of a hurry … to get somewhere early enough to get a campsite. The somewhere I am aiming for is Cape Perpetua.

I gave myself a pretty good workout this afternoon.  I did the hike up to the overlook – 1.3 miles, 700′ – I had sort of planned to walk back down on the road, but I realized I’d lost my hat on the trail, so … back down the trail for me. It was a lot easier going down, and of course the view is better almost always going down, looking out and over instead of at the side of the mountain.

At the bottom I kept on going, to the coastal trail and the big show here, the surf pounding the basalt reef. Pretty cool. Sunset was hijacked by the cloud layer offshore, which was a little disappointing. Walked back through the tunnel past the Visitors Center, then the long, long walk up the campground road to far away site 31. You don’t notice when driving, but the road is long and pretty steeply inclined. Also, sites on only one side of the road, so 1 to 31 is a good haul!

Saturday

I can’t find my phone this morning. I’m all a-dither about it.

WOO!  There is no emoticon adequate to describe my joy! My phone was in the Visitors Center. It was dead, but I took it back to the van, charged it up, and yes, it is my phone! My best and only guess as to how it escaped me at the place the ranger cutie said it was found is that I took it out to check the time and missed my pocket putting it back in. Nobody could be that stupid, right? But evidently ….

Since tonight’s plan is to sleep in the casino parking lot, I have all of the daylight hours in which to dither around; no notion of “must be somewhere” before the campsites are taken. I start by killing a couple of hours in Yachats, mostly soaking up internet at the cafe, but also walking around the somewhat precious little town.

New big place is Newport, with the Aquarium and Marine Center, and … oh yes! the Rogue Brewery, which I’ve always seen but never visited. Pretty crazy on a Saturday afternoon, but as I hoped, I was able to squeeze in pretty quick as one at the bar. I had FUN!  I had 4 oz shots of 8 different flavors of beer.

The fog has moved from it’s stationary spot a few hundred yards off shore to the middle of the bay! No the big bridge disappears into the fog. I walk off some of the beer by walking out to the end of the pier, where there are many folks crab fishing. If I lived in Newport I would be crab fishing!

Then the drive to Chinook Winds Casino. Sadly the run from Newport to the top of Lincoln City is one big strip mall interrupted for a few miles by the peace and beauty of Stiglitz Bay.  Lotsa traffic on Saturday afternoon

I stop at the always scenic Depoe Bay for more fog-walking. I love that the fish cleaning place is right below the bridge so you can watch em slice ’em up!

Chinook Winds parking lot is very full and very busy on Saturday night.  First parking attempt is a FAIL.  I am just parking when some tweaker-ish old pickup truck barrels around the corner and a nasty woman with her two dead-eyed kids crabs at me for blocking access to their trailer hitch. “Are you going anywhere?” “No!” It was upsetting. I stewed for a while them moved 40 feet away to a much nicer spot.

I made myself some tea and hung out till 9:30-ish when I decided to see what’s happening at the casino on Saturday night!  DJ at 10 in the steak house, which they re-purpose as their late-night club when they need one.

The DJ was a little too heavy on the ass-bumping music for me, not quite funky. But the kids were having at it. I lasted one beer’s worth.

Sunday

This very spot is where Portlandians turn east onto Route 18; where they leave the coast and head inland. So every vehicle from the bottom 3/4’s of the coast who wants to go back to Portland on an August Sunday goes through this light.

It’s pretty crazy today. Forget about my usual breakfast place, the line was into the parking lot. While cruising across the highway to Safeway, I espied a donut shoppe that really hit the spot – I even got the Sunday Oregonian – seeing it there reminded me that it has my 16×16 sudoku! Then the Safeway for sando and salads, then easy driving southward. Stop and get a feel for Stiglitz Bay, even follow the bayside road inland for a few mils. At least now I know where to pull over and enjoy it!

Get off at the flats of south Newport. No Brewery this time, but did chreck out a swell breakfast place – various seafoods with eggs! Pretend to go to the state CG, but the line at the gate was all I needed to see. On to Tillicum – woo!

I got a spot, one of the last few, but this place was weird  tonight. Many, many dogs – I met some nice people because their dog picked ME out of the whole huge expanse of sand as the person he wanted to take a giant dump in front of. I appreciate the compliment, really I was honored … but annoyed.

The campground is laid out in an oval. Sites on the inside of the oval don’t have much privacy. There’s not much ground cover in that particular kind of coastal pine forest, so we’re all pretty much hanging out looking at each other. I’m kind of at the top of the little hill, so I see all of them and all of them see me.

They were all quiet and mellow – the guy below me played very nice guitar and was otherwise quiet. The folks on the outside of the oval however were a problem. Some asshole was doing something important where he kept his monster truck running and his headlights on for about 20 minutes from 9:30 or so. I had to hide in the shadow of my van. In the morning I could not figure out what the dealio was – could not figure out why the drama was needed.