It sure was a change in temperature once we left the Smith River sunshine and hit the summer fog of the coast. But it's always so beautiful to be driving up the coast no matter the weather. We had never driven up this section of the road passing through Brookings and Gold Beach on our way to Bandon, OR. It's a beautiful road with not much traffic, but we saw lots of motorhomes and trailers. It seemed like there were pull outs every curve we came around with easy access to the beach below. We stopped a couple of times, made a cup of tea and walked the beaches.
Poor Foster, he always has such a hard time on our travel days. From the time we load up and get him inside, he pants so hard and is so anxious. The more we can stop and give him a break, the better. He loves the beach. He's been such a trouper as we have totally changed his life with our travels. But what a love to have along with us. Here's my duo after I'd taken off for a longer beach walk and they stayed on the warm sand.
Later in the afternoon the skies cleared and the sun brought out the blue skies. As we got close to Bandon, OR we passed lots of cranberry bogs, a growing industry along this part of the coast; and I thought cranberries only grew on the east coast! If we come back in September we can enjoy the Cranberry Festival including Cranberry Easting Contest and a Cranberry Court.
Our first 2 nights were at Bullard's Beach State Park north of Bandon right along the Coquille River. It was so pretty when we pulled in about 2PM and lucky for us we got one of the last available campsites, A52. The campground is large with 3 loops and we really got a great site, shrubs on 3 sides and a large tent and campfire area. I got on my bike to check out the park then we decided to take a look at the little town on the other side of the river. I love these welcoming signs! A cute little town with lots of galleries and small shops, but by this time town was closed.
We took a drive along the bluff a little further south to see Face Rock. We ended up along the marina for a Mexican dinner and view of the boats. Then back to our campsite for a campfire.
It was foggy when we got up the next morning, but cleared early, nice to get on our bikes for a ride out to the beach. The wind was up so coats were needed.
By noon it was time to explore north up towards Coos Bay. We took a scenic byway and came upon a great nature preserve to visit and walk, a National Estuarian Reserve. Cooler here but beautiful. After checking out a couple of nearby campgrounds, state and county, we went on into Coos Bay passing through the little fishing village of Charleston. We wanted to visit a Verizon store in town to see if we could get a wifi device to provide a stronger signal when we are out of wifi area. That took most of our afternoon but I'm so glad we did it. I bought a Verizon Jetpack with 4G and so far it's been wonderful. The hotspot I'd tried to use on my iphone just never had enough strength to allow me to download photos and work on the blog anytime I wanted. So this is terrific. And, it's why I can get caught up and STAY caught up now as we travel.
Before leaving Wednesday morning, we visited the darling Coquille River Lighthouse which sits on the bar at the mouth of the river. Entering the river was hazardous in the late 1800s so a jetty was built on the south side of the river and the lighthouse was begun in 1891. We've toured lots of lighthouses along the coast but the life of the keepers here was different. There was a long wooden walkway that connected the lighthouse to the keepers' duplex about 650' away instead of living in the structure as they usually do. I cant imagine the life on this cold and windy section of coast back in those times. We enjoyed talking to the volunteers that gave the tour and run the little gift shop (always gotta have a gift shop) so that evening we downloaded the application to be a volunteer maybe next year. That would be too fun!
Our next destination was Florence and a 3 night stay at the gorgeous Elks Park just north of town. But first things first, we stopped at for coffee at our favorite little coffee house right along the river, The Siuslaw Coffee Roasters. Warm and sunny out on the back deck, we stayed for a couple of hours reading and relaxing before going on out to the park.
We had site #33 at the park, just perfect!!! Totally private and beautiful. We didn't do much in Florence this time, just hung out at our place enjoying the warm sun and scenery. We did go back into town on Friday night for dinner and live music at Traveler's Cove then picked up tickets at the Florence Playhouse for a musical tribute to Broadway,
The Great White Way.
We were off again on Saturday morning going all the way to Tillamook and another Elks park outside of the town. On our drive up and down the coast that morning, Paul noticed a squealing noise each time he braked...not a good thing when you're pulling so much weight. That became our primary focus and luckily there was a large equipment repair shop in town that could look at our rig on Monday morning. Not sure we could have found a place like that anywhere else. But this is major dairy and farming area so they're used to working on really big machinery.
That meant Paul had to take our house into the shop, so I stayed back at the park and used the clubhouse to do some fun sewing most of the day.The shop replaced all our brakes so now we know we're good to go with no worries about the stopping.
One thing I love about these little towns along the Oregon coast are the beautiful hanging flower baskets on every light-post in town. They are stunning!!!
I even found a nearby nursery that does most of these plants. I just kept staring at the size of these planters, they're huge!
While we were in the area we asked for the best hamburger place around and were told to go to The Schooner in little Neparts Bay. What a find, just what we wanted! Outside seating with view of the bay and fantastic hamburgers. The burger isn't on the printed menu, but when we asked he said, Yes, they do have a great hamburger. A walk around the beach for a bit then home again.
Once we got the motorhome repaired on Monday we took a late afternoon drive out to the little town of Oceanside for another long beach walk and finished off with the BEST marionberry cobble at Roseanna's Restaurant. Not to be missed if ever in that area.
The sunset was beautiful as it peeked out of the cloudy sky, and this is at 9PM at night. that's what's so fun about being up here at this time of the year, sunset is late in the evening. On the foggy days we had the sky cleared about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, then we'd go out about 4 and take a beautiful drive and stop for sunset. It does mean we go to bed so much later than usual, but it's wonderful.
Slowly we were inching our way north with a few days left to get near Port Angeles by Friday for our ferry across to Vancouver Island Sat. morning. I think we've both decided next year we'll plant ourselves along the coast of Oregon for at least a month rather than just driving through it all. There's so much more to explore.
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