Waldport, OR

Today was drama-free, aside from the spectacular dramatic sights along my journey. I got up, packed up, drove to the next designated stopping spot, set up, spent the afternoon sightseeing and am now tucked into my little home for the night. This is a good thing.

From now on I am not going to pay any attention at all to the forecast because today was supposed to be cloudy all day, and it was absolutely beautiful; sunny and up to about 18 degrees.
On Saturday when I went to the cheese factory, I traversed the first part of today’s travels and today I carried on further south. There really are no words to describe the beauty of this coast. At one of my stops today, I had a chat with Pat and Harry from Indiana, and we talked about all the different kinds of beauty, and this coast definitely fits one of those notions. They too said I was brave to be doing this trip by myself. I know when people say that out loud that in their head they are substituting “crazy” for “brave”.

As I said, I set up camp early this afternoon at this most adorable campsite at the mouth of the Alsea River just over the bridge from Waldport. I then back tracked to visit some of the spots that I had seen along the way in a hurry since it was sunny and one never knows how long that might be.

I stopped at Seal Rocks and took some pics, and talked to a young man who was cycling along the Oregon Coast Cycle Route. I asked him what advice he’d have for my friends who would be doing some bicycling along the coast next year and he had two pieces of advice. Don’t leave it till October, do it in September when it’s not so crowded as summer and you have a better chance of good weather and take your time and enjoy it. Good advice I thought. So there you go Brenda.

Depoe Bay was my turn-around point and I stopped at the Chowder Bowl just across the main street from one of the most spectacular views, for a cup of clam chowder and salad and plotted my stops for this afternoon. The chowder was excellent and the soup, salad and garlic toast plus my usual diet coke was all under $15, U.S. of course. Seems like just yesterday I was sitting on the east coast of Canada doing the same thing. It was Cape Breton at the beginning of June, 4 and 1/2 months ago. Hard to believe.

Defoe Bay claims to have the world’s smallest navigable harbour, which is where the whale watching boats are tied up. There is a resident pod of grey whales that I managed to see some evidence of this afternoon, having seen several spouts in a matter of just a few minutes when one of the locals pointed them out to me. And the fishing scene from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was filmed here. There is a really small channel into the harbour and although it was rough enough to shut down the whale watching tours, the water was like glass in the harbour.

Next it was along the Otter Crest Loop, a must do for bicyclists, and a stop at Cape Foulweather (named by Captain James Cook during his 1778 voyage) to see the Devil’s Punch Bowl, and as it turns out hundreds of resident pelicans. The Devil’s Punch Bowl is a sandstone formation that waves slosh in and out of creating quite the spray when it is high tide and the waves are high. Unfortunately neither was the case today.

Further down the coast, at Newport, I visited Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area and shot pics of the Lighthouse there as well as the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse which was just a mile or so further south.

I did a quick loop down to Nye Beach (where the sunset pic is taken) and Historic Newport Bay, but it was getting dark so I headed home after a fabulous day on the road.

Newport, OR

Otter Rock, OR

Depoe Bay, OR

Lincoln City, OR

Warrenton, OR

The Oregon Coast. It’s beautiful. Rugged and moody. Warm and fun. Paradise for photographers, hikers and shoppers alike.

I started the day back in Astoria, poking around the town a bit on my way to and from the Astoria Column. The Column stands at the top of Coxcomb Hill on the highest peak in Astoria. It was built in 1926 with financing from the Great Northern Railway and one of the famed Astor family. It stands 125 feet high, and I climbed to the top observation deck, all 164 steps. Unfortunately the clouds were still quite thick so not great for picture taking, but it was worth the epic effort to see the panorama from the observation deck. The murals on the column depict all sorts of history, including the tales of Lewis and Clark as this was the north-western terminus of their their Expedition in November of 1805.

Next I headed south on Highway 101, called the Pacific Coast Scenic Byway, not surprisingly, along the Pacific coast. By this time the sun had come out and it had warmed to 18 or so degrees, so I stopped when I arrived at Cannon Beach to stroll along the beach and get some photos of Haystack Rock without which no trip to the Oregon coast would be complete. I walked on the beach for almost 2 hours, enjoying the sun and sound of the surf. The beach of beautiful fine sand is really wide, and the water shallow, depending on the tides. It goes for miles with smaller versions of Haystack Rock poking up from time to time along the coast.

I had worked up an appetite so I picked up a deli sandwich and ate it sitting on a porch along the main drag, people watching. Cannon Beach has more art galleries than almost any town I’ve been in, I think. And the shops are definitely upscale, unique and interesting. Traffic and parking in late October were crazy, although it was a warm Saturday and it’s only an hour and a half drive from Portland. Can’t imagine what it’s like in the summer. The accommodation here was also high quality from private beach houses to B&Bs, to small hotels all running along the cliff overlooking the beach.

Revived by the rest and sandwich, I headed further south along the coast. The drive alternated between magnificent cliff views of the Pacific and heavily forested winding roads. Intersperced are cute towns all trying to compete for the almighty tourist buck and supporting the local fishing industry. Oysters appear to be a favourite, but since I’m not a fan I didn’t investigate. A particularly nice stretch was between Cannon Beach, through Oswald West State Park and down to Neakahnie-Manzanita State Park. Sometimes at sea level and then climbing through forest to 200 feet to poke out again to look down along the coast. There are multiple hiking trails along the way, and lots of pull outs to stop and admire the view. And beaches…….unbelievable beaches.

My stop in Tillamook was to visit the Tillamook Cheese Factory, just north of, you guessed it, Tillamook. Several people had mentioned it was an interesting stop and so I had to investigate. Having tours of production facilities is an excellent marketing tool. Adding some second floor windows to the plant and a cheese tasting line where I was able to consume maybe 1 ounce of cheese, resulted in US$ 39 in sales to me alone, not to mention the ice cream cone. (Which, BTW, Nanci was delicious!).

I turned around and headed north again, not without a couple of stops along the way to admire the views again in different light. I’m tucked back in my Prolite and unfortunately the rain has started and so I’m happy to be cocooning this evening.

Tillamook, OR

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.