Oregon Coast - part 4

As luck would have it, the Sunday before Memorial Day in Newport was miserable.  Windy, chilly, rainy, yucky.  Lots of the folks in the RV park hitched up and left, since Monday wasn't supposed to be much better.  And, of course, Monday was beautiful.

We stopped to talk with one of the marina employees who told us a guy had to be helicoptered out of the drink Sunday.  He was salmon fishing and his boat went down, not just capsized, down to the bottom.  He's lucky the Coast Guard could get to him quickly.

Since Monday was splendid, we walked down to the end of the South Beach jetty, dogs in tow.  Interesting things going on.  Scuba divers with spear guns, families, shore birds,fishermen, and other items too numerous to mention.  On the way back, Lola plopped herself down and refused to take one more step.  (In fairness to Lola, it was a long walk for little stumpy legs.)  After a few minutes she recovered and was ready to continue.

The Rogue Brewery is on the perimeter of the marina/rv park.  We had lunch there and were mystified by their selection of 38 different kinds of beer they brew.  They also have a distillery and make a dozen or so different liquors. The restaurant had the best clam chowder we've had all the way up the coast.

We took the dogs for one last long walk down to the fishing pier.  The seagulls perch on the railing of the pier and don't move until you are almost even with them.

We packed up Tuesday and prepared to leave Wednesday.  Of course, it was raining cats and dogs.  Mike got soaked.  When we got into the park at Portland, he was almost finished setting up and it started to rain again.  Soaked again.  Now the sun is shining.  He is beginning to feel picked on.

We had a great time driving the Pacific Coastal Scenic By-way.  I recommend it.  Perhaps one day we will do the other piece we missed, San Francisco south to Los Angeles.

Oregon Coast part 3

As we were packing up the rig at Gold Beach, I walked over to the people across from us to kill some time.  As it turned out, they are both Irish, Bob born in Belfast and Jess born in County Down. They have been in the US for decades but still retain a faint Irish brogue. Mike and I spent an hour talking with them about RVing and especially about Ireland.  What a great way to finish at Gold Beach.   They live at Point Robert, Washington, so we may see them later in the summer before we go to Port Townsend.

The drive up the coast to Newport was relatively short, 170 miles, and very beautiful.  We were stopped for 15-20 minutes while traffic was held for construction at a tunnel.  Fortunately we had a great view of the Heceta Head Lighthouse.

We are staying at the RV park associated with the Newport Marina.  There is another spectacular bridge, this one also originally built in the 1930's.  Mike said the sign said it was a WPA project.

You can see the marina and part of the RV park below and behind the bridge.  A little boy next to us on the viewpoint told his mother, "It's a roller coaster!"  And it does look like a roller coaster.  

The crowds are beginning to gather here, as this is a big resort area and Memorial Day is Monday.  We went out today, got exasperated with the crowds, and wound up at the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse Park, Yaquina Bay Lighthouse.

Yaquina Bay Lighthouse

I continue to be surprised at how deep these Oregon beaches are.  My "better" camera got water inside the lens and I'm using the little camera which has a short telefoto.  People out on this beach look like ants.

There are people on this beach.

I had to laugh at the sign at the entrance to the path down to the beach.  It lists a couple of dozen warnings and "DO NOTs". Nothing like fear of death to make for a great day.  Note the sign at the right about the debris coming ashore from the Japanese tsunami.  The camp host told me an entire dock washed up here and it is somewhere in the harbor, secured so it won't take off again.

There are two replica sailing ships in the harbor.  In the afternoon, they sail out into the Pacific off the beach and conduct mock sea battles, complete with black powder smoke and cannonfire.  My telefoto is so anemic that you can barely even see the ships.  It was fun to watch, as we had binoculars. 

Black specks in center left are the ships.

Once again we have been the recipients of the kindness of strangers.  Last night I walked out to the trash bin to drop off what was left of the steamer clams we had fixed for dinner.  There was a multi-generational family across from the bin with a big pot over a propane burner.  Curiosity being a major component of my psyche, I asked the oldest guy what they were cooking.  It was crabs which they had caught that day.  He opened the cooler and pointed out Dungeness crabs and rock crabs (?) and said they had been lucky as they had a whole bunch.  We chatted back and forth and he was surprised we were a) from Kansas b) full-time RVers.  An hour or so later, there was a knock on the door.  Here was the gentleman with a whole gallon bag of cooked crab for us.  That's twice now that a local has given us cooked crab.  

Sunday 5/24:  It was supposed to rain all day today but it appears to be clearing.  All the people who came out to Newport for the holiday and to fish/crab will be happy to get a good day.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has a big installation here in Newport.  I walked the dogs down to the river this morning (Yaquina River is very wide and deep as it approaches the Pacific).  There are two large and technologically advanced ships tied up at the harbor.

NOAA

What do to in case of earthquake.

Just in case any of you are in need of earthquake/tsunami emergency preparedness.  

There is another lighthouse, an active one (entirely automated, no lighthouse keeper) a little further north up the coast.  That was today's objective.  As you can tell from the photos, our beautiful weather has now deserted us and it was VERY CHILLY AND WINDY on the point.  Mike and I are both amazed at the number of people who are running around in shorts/t-shirts/sandals.  We were cold in pullovers, jeans, and jackets.  

Yaquina Head Lighthouse

"To those lost at sea with special affection
for the fisherman of the Pacific Northwest."

Oregon Coast part 2

The Rogue River borders Gold Beach on the north.  There's an art nouveau-ish bridge (Isaac Lee Patterson Bridge) which spans it, built in 1932.

In the marina, out of the traffic pattern, is the wreck of the Mary D. Hume.  Quite an interesting story.  Mary D Hume

Today (Tuesday 5/20) is our last day in Gold Beach.  As you can see from the photos, we have had brilliant weather.  Only one day has been rainy.  We had no particular destination in mind today, just got in the truck and headed north through Port Orford.  We saw a sign for Elk River Road and turned east.  See photos. Eventually we ran out of road and hit gravel so we turned around.  This was a beautiful drive.

Note to Wyatt:  There is a state fish hatchery on this river.  

And one last thought:  we have been in tsunami territory most of the past couple of weeks.  The RV'er closest to the beach in this park knows what to do.

More later.  Tomorrow we are headed north to Newport, another OR beach town.

Oregon Coast part 1

Redwood Highway is a definite must.  We spent all day Wednesday (5/14) driving Hwy 101 from just south of Willits, CA, to Gold Beach, OR.  I lost count of the number of state redwood parks (6 or 7) and the Redwood National Park.  The day was perfect, sunny and clear, with very little traffic.  Spectacular scenery, especially for those of us flatlanders accustomed to less dramatic country.

We will be here at Gold Beach OR for the next week.  Our park is within 100 yards of the beach so we can trudge over the dunes and we're there.  Mercifully it is cooler than California where we were dealing with temps in the 90's.  (Might have been in Kansas.)  I saw on the news that the San Diego area is fighting wildfires so we left there at the right time.  Gold Beach gets 80 inches of rain a year, as compared to KC's 40 inches.  The climate here must be a lot like Ireland, cool to chilly but seldom below freezing and lots of mist/drizzle/rain.

The dogs don't quite know about the beach.  Muppet discovered he can dig and dig and dig and throw sand all over Lola.  There's a lot of driftwood on the beach.  See photo below.

Can you find the dog?

Under the general heading of oddities, here's another one.  Mike and I were sitting outside this morning when an elderly lady in a wheel chair rolled up.  She needed a ride to the local jail (where she was recently a guest) to pick up her sunglasses which they had neglected to give her when she left.  So I said I would take her.  All the way to the jail, a couple of miles, she pointed out all the places where the sidewalk/curb was not disabled-friendly and that's why she keeps getting jay-rolling tickets.  This apparently is why she was in jail.

She lives in an RV to which we are adjacent.  There is no vehicle associated with her old RV and she clearly didn't get it here on her own.  She belongs in assisted living someplace, as she is both mentally and physically disabled.

When I got her sunglasses, she asked if I could please let her out as a grocery store and then pick her up a couple of blocks down at another grocery store.  Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.  I dropped her off and got an cream cone across from the second market and waited.  Here she came, with two young hitchhikers and a pit bull in tow.  She had promised them lunch if they would carry her groceries. Okay, so now load up the elderly lady, the wheel chair, two hitchhikers and a dog for the ride back to the park.  Mike was amazed when I pulled up.

I do like this little park.  It has a faux lighthouse you can climb which provides a great view. This is the time of year when gray whales migrate from the Sea of Cortez in Mexico  to the feeding grounds off Alaska.  As I sat on the beach with the dogs, I could see passing whales exhaling.

We spent all day Monday going back south to visit scenic points in the Samuel Boardman State Park.  I have so many photos I am having a hard time figuring out what to post.  It's one breath-taking scene after another.  Parts of it remind me of the Irish coast.  

Before erosion

After erosion

We stopped at the Thomas Creek Bridge viewpoint and hiked a trail I thought would lead somewhere I could get a photo of the bridge.  It's the highest in OR at 345 feet.  We hiked and hiked until we came to the edge of a cliff...no photo.  We did have fun with the dogs.  They were most interested in the giant plants that seem to thrive here.

Does this plant eat animals?

We continued south to Brookings OR and located the marina, thanks to a helpful police officer.  We were way past eat o'clock so we tried the Hungry Clam.  Good fish and chips (not as good as Spuds) and average crab cakes.

This post is getting long so I will end it and open a new one for the last couple of adventures in Gold Beach.

The Last of California

We are staying at an RV park on the grounds of what was once Ridgewood Ranch, home of Seabiscuit  Ridgewood Ranch.  This is very beautiful country with lush pastures and wonderful vistas. ( I highly recommend Laura Hillenbrand’s book Seabiscuit:  An American Legend.  She also wrote Unbroken, an equally good book.) The buildings and grounds do not open to the public until June so I am disappointed we can’t see the home, the stud barn, and the grounds.   Perhaps we will be back this way some day between June 1 and September 30 and can tour the estate.

Today (Mother’s Day) the camp host walked over to give us a sheet on the history of the ranch.  He’s 85 years old and has lived here in the park for 20 years. He was born and raised in Willits, the town directly to the north of the park.  The camp host, Will, spoke of the Howard family, owners of the Ridgewood Ranch and Seabiscuit, with great affection and respect.  He knew the family (including Seabiscuit) when he was a child/teenager and spent time here on the ranch.

Adjacent to the park, the land is owned by the Ridgewood Nature Conservancy, so birds, game, whatever, cannot be disturbed or hunted.  This is the breeding season for turkeys and the males are busy displaying their assets to the utterly unimpressed hens.  The toms hang out in groups, the hens are more solitary.  I have never gotten this close to a wild turkey. Usually when they spot you, they are gone.  These have little or no fear of humans and they jump the fence and come into the park.  And these are BIG birds.  Even Fearless Lola is respectful. (Update:  Fearless Lola took off in pursuit of a hen.  Good thing there was a fence or I would still be chasing her.)Turkeys are not native to California.  They were introduced as game birds and this variety is native to KS, OK, TX, NM.

Another frequent visitor is deer.  These are common and native to the area.  Will said there are white deer (not albinos), introduced when someone gave 20 of them to the Howard family decades ago.  They are elusive and seldom seen.  According to Will, there are hundreds of them.

We have taken two different drives through the redwood forests to the Mendocino Coast.  If it seems like we are uncharacteristically immobile, we are.  Mike needed a break from the hustling from place to place. 

More Mendocino coastline:

Bay Area

Saturday (4/26)

It started raining at Grass Valley the night before we were to leave.  By morning, it was still raining and Mike was soaked by the time he got the rig ready to roll.  We missed our turn and headed west (right direction) and then missed three consecutive places where we could have turned around.  By this time, we just said, “Okay, we will go a different way.”  And we did.  It continued to mist, sprinkle, or pour all the way into the Bay area.  True to its reputation, the Bay area was overcast, chilly (50 degrees) and rainy. 

We had a difficult time finding the park in Santa Rosa.  Easy to find the fairgrounds but you can’t see the park, it’s not in Garmin, and there are NO SIGNS.  But we did eventually get here.  And Mike got soaked again setting up the rig.  And then it stopped raining. 

This park is on the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.  Appropriately enough, they have "slipcovers" for the trash cans.  See below.

We plan to take a couple of “down” days and not leave the park.  Next week the weather looks pretty good so we will venture out then.

Monday

The weather is absolutely spectacular…bright sunshine, warm, with light breezes. 

I usually try to avoid the big city areas as it’s difficult to maneuver through them.  (We got stuck in a huge traffic jam in the middle of Denver, six lanes each way.)  However, if I am really set on something, I find a park that allows us to do whatever I want in a short drive.  (We spent several days in Long Beach CA at a park…can’t get much more Big City than that.  I wanted to see my cousins.)  So we are Santa Rosa, north of the Bay area.

When I was a child, my family took a trip to California; on that trip, we were in San Francisco.  I remember my amazement as a 10 year old at the Golden Gate Bridge.  We spent yesterday morning in the Golden Gate Bridge Park and I am still amazed. 

There is an old Army post Fort Point which sits directly under the south approach to the bridge, abandoned now, but still there.  The Army built the breakwater in the 1860’s to protect the fort and it was re-built when the bridge was constructed.  The bridge is 4200 feet long and withstood the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1988.  It was begun in 1933 and finished in 1937, all of it done without computers, computer simulation, calculators, GPS, any of the tools available to today’s engineers.

Fort Point

Mike with Alcatraz in the background

One other item on San Francisco:  My grandfather Dick Shrum was a master stonemason and bricklayer.  After the 1907 earthquake, he came to the city from Indiana and helped to re-build it.  There are probably buildings which are standing today which he helped build or repair.  (I have often wondered why a handsome young man whose skills were in demand would leave SF to return to either Kansas or Indiana.  He and my grandmother were married in 1910 and I don’t think he knew her when he lived in SF.  I know they met in Coffeyville.)

Dick Shrum ca. 1908

We wanted to see some of the countryside so we took a trip to a place called Bodega Bay.  My niece Dana is familiar with it and said there isn't much there.  And, as usual, she’s right. 

It’s mostly a marina or several marinas for commercial and recreational fishing boats but the bay itself is beautiful.  For a Kansas flatlander whose idea of the ocean is just a really, really big farm pond, I take every opportunity to get to the shore.  And there is a little eating place called Spud Point Crab Company that supposedly has killer clam chowder.  Since one of my very favorite places is Spud’s in Seattle, how could I not want to try this?  They only make their famous crab cakes on Saturday-Sunday so we had clam chowder and shared a tri-tip sandwich.  The clam chowder was great, the sandwich not so much.  Mike’s barbecue is far superior.

Wednesday drove the Mendocino County coastline on the old coast road, Highway 1.  We went north first on Hwy 101, then NW on Hwy 128 to just south of Albion.  As a bonus, our route took us through the Navarro Redwoods.  The road through the park was built to minimize the number of trees which had to be removed, so it’s very narrow with NO shoulder.  And it’s very dark.  Sunlight doesn’t make it to the road, as the trees are so tall and close.  And there were big logging trucks coming at us.  Some of them had only five or six gigantic logs. 

It’s only about 90 miles from Albion to Bodega Bay but it took us a good three hours.  Mike laughed at the speed limit signs…55 MPH.  In your dreams.  Lots of 15 MPH curves, up and down hills, over and around and lots of cliffs.  The road follows the contours of the land.  It is spectacular scenery and well worth the effort.  (I had considered going north next week on Highway 1….glad I changed our route to Hwy 101.  Towing a 35 foot trailer on Hwy 1 wouldn't be a good idea.)  We stopped at a state park for a picnic lunch.  Mike at that point needed a break from the driving.

We also stopped to see the Point Arena Lighthouse.  The view from the coast here is spectacular. 

Coming up next:  a visit to a winery.  (How could we be in the Napa/Sonoma area and not visit a winery?)  I started looking for a winery to visit.  There are only 300+ in Sonoma County and still more in Napa County.  The high-end places which look like a 17th century French chateau were definitely out.  And so were the mega-wineries like Kendall-Jackson and Sebastiani.  I stumbled across the perfect place Larson Family Winery. Their corporate motto: "We drink all we can and sell the rest." Our kind of place.  And they welcome dogs.

The road to the winery is just a rutted country dirt/gravel lane.  It was another perfect day, warm and sunny with a light breeze  The winery is owned by the Larson family, descendants of the Millerick family who owned a ranch here.  I would guess they decided raising grapes and making wine was both easier and more profitable than raising cattle so they converted the pastures to vineyards.

No wine for Muppet

Tasting Room

I had packed a picnic lunch for us which we enjoyed on their outdoor shaded patio, with a glass of their organic Chardonnay.  Then on to the serious tasting.  Their Chardonnay is a medal-winning one and it was excellent.  The Pinot Noir was good but not great.  But their Three Lab Cab...lovely.

The following signs are on the lane back out to the highway:

We will now pack up and move to the home of the immortal Seabiscuit on Monday.  Stay tuned.