Cannon Beach, OR

Astoria, OR

Warrenton, OR

So, after I finished my blog last night (sitting at the local MacDonalds) I went back to my trailer to discover that my propane tank was empty and it was too late to do anything about it. So, no problem, I hunkered down under my duvet and had a great sleep.

This morning I had them fill up the propane tank (he put in 5.7 gallons) on my way out of the campground and off I went.

Today’s drive was fabulous. It’s a great time of year to be travelling in this area, because there is hardly any traffic and the leaves are still quite colourful. I didn’t get too many pictures because the roads were primarily country roads, with no shoulders or pull offs where there was anything of interest.

Coming south along the eastern side of the Olympic Peninsula, along the Hood Canal was fabulous. Winding roads, through hills with the forest right up to the road, meeting up with the ocean inlets from time to time. Beautiful homes, rolling green farm land, mossy cedars, streams and rivers. Pretty much everything.

After crossing over to the west and hitting the Pacific, I headed south along Hwy 101 through to the southern border of Washington/Oregon. The coast along here is a great wildlife (shore birds, etc) area, with lots of sloughs. The mighty Columbia River comes out to the ocean at the border and the river delta is spanned by the 6.8 km long Astoria-Kegler Bridge with the deep seaport of Astoria, Oregon on the south shore. At least there were no “incidents” on this bridge, but you better believe I was thinking about another bridge a few months ago.

I arrived at my KOA in Warrenton, in respectable time and was checked in and pulled through (yes, still not backing in when I can avoid it) my campsite. I hopped out to get set up so I could go exploring, only to discover propane being expelled from my tank release valve. Great. So, turn off the tank, remove the cable to the trailer, move the car and go get help from the office. Apparently my tank only holds 5 gallons (you’ll recall that they put 5.7 gallons in) and so it had been overfilled and with the warmer temperatures of the afternoon, the excess was now being expelled through the overflow valve. And the KOA fellow said the kind of tank I had was not legal to refill in Oregon because it didn’t have an “OPD” or Overflow protection device – which would have prevented the problem in the first place. So instead of getting out exploring I was off to Home Depot to get the proper tank and back to install it. Argh.

When are the “adventures” going to stop? I could stand some boring days.

I finally got going to get “lunch” at about 4:30pm and ended up having an early dinner down the coast in the town of Seaside. I had previously visited this area in the summer, and I think it was actually warmer today that it was then. (Gill was very young and after insisting on playing in the sand and freezing, she suggested we come here again in the summer – it was July). It got up to 16 degrees today, although mostly overcast.

I walked along the main drag and boardwalk. The main street is lined with the normal tourist shops, where fudge and taffy is the specialty, but also prominent are huge video and pinball arcades, a mall with a carousel in it, and bumper cars.

It was busier than I expected for late October so before it got too busy in the limited selection of restaurants, I grabbed dinner at the Pig ‘n Pancake, a Seaside institution.

Upon my return to my campground, I sat outside at the communal fire for a bit since it was practically balmy, and watched the coming and going and did some research to what to do tomorrow.

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