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.