Oregon Coast and the 4th of July

Westward again

After leaving Crater Lake we headed back towards the coast and began a “windy 2-lane road” phase of the trip, starting with Oregon 227 (also known as Tiller-Trail Highway) up and over a couple of mountains in the southern cascades in the Umpqua National Forest.  Luckily it’s a sparsely traveled route, so I didn’t end up with a caravan of cars behind me when I had traversed several of the switchbacks at 35 mph and avoided head on collisions while taking my half of the road out of the middle!  The mountains, though, proved just to be a warm up for the crazy twisted curves that I found as I approached the coast and our campground in Coos Bay (partly my fault for missing a turn in an earlier town and not looking closely at the re-routing that Apple Maps provided). I drove through several spots where it would have been literally impossible to squeeze past any traffic headed towards me and got some interesting looks from a few locals out in their yards, undoubtedly wondering how I ended up on their street with a giant trailer in tow! Although slow, the drive had beautiful scenery and was still faster than the route that had me take the interstate back to the 101 - yes, even when taking into account my missed turn.

Coos Bay

Our first destination on this leg of the trip was a little coastal town called Coos Bay.  Our RV park was pretty new (first summer in operation) and actually in a suburb of Coos Bay called Charleston - do towns with a population of 16,000 have suburbs?  Anyway we were within walking distance of Bastendorf Beach and once we got the trailer set up and unloaded Julie’s car we hoofed it down the hill to check it out.  We weren’t prepared to play in the water since it was cool and foggy but the girls didn’t care and ended up jumping into a little creek running towards the ocean with their clothes on.  So I walked back to the campground for towels and the car while Julie and girls had fun playing in the sand and mud.

The next day was July 3rd and we knew we’d be up late to watch fireworks so we tried to lay low and take it easy - we are still figuring out how to do that.  We ended up taking a scenic drive through the 3 state parks just south the campsite where we saw a bunch of sea lions, seals, and elephant seals hanging out at Shell Island.  Then we hit up the Charleston Sea Life Center, which is part of the University Oregon’s marine biology program.  It had a really cool tank full of nudibranchs (which Julie could have stared at all day), an octopus they were teaching to take things out of jars, whale skeletons and many other interesting and sometimes interactive displays that taught us all about the local marine life.  We then drove through town to explore the parking situation for that evenings fireworks (but also stopped at both a brewery to fill the growler and the dollar store for the girls to spend some of their money) and made it back in time for a brief stop over at the trailer for some food and relaxing before it was time to go back to town for the fireworks.  Julie nailed the parking spot and we got to watch an awesome fireworks show put on by the local casino.  Luckily, thanks to Julie’s parking spot, it was relatively easy to get out of town after the show and the girls managed to be asleep before 11 (sadly we considered that a win)!

The morning of the 4th the girls met some kids on the playground and spent the morning leaving us alone - winning!  I even got to check out the inside of their rented airstream (I’ve always wanted to see inside one - it was cool but I like our layout much better…slides make trailers so much bigger). We spent the afternoon at the beach and decided there was no way the municipal fireworks show scheduled for that night was going to be as good as the one put on by the casino so we decided not to venture out to watch it.   Instead we got to try and do bedtime while listening to what must have been 10,000 or more fireworks that were being shot off by individuals on the beach. The nearly constant booms started around 8 - almost two hours before dark - and finally faded to an end around 11.

Netarts Bay

The fifth was a travel day and we loaded up the trailer for the relatively short drive to Netarts Bay Garden Resort in the tiny town of Netarts, Oregon.  The RV park wasn’t anything special but it would suffice for the few nights we were there, and we were just across from the laundry facilities which was nice since we destroyed so many outfits at the beach down in coos bay!  Once the girls arrived and checked the place out, we headed into Tilamook and got some dinner at the local brewpub ran by Pelican Brewing.  The clam chowder bread bowl and the grilled fish tacos did not disappoint, and the beers were pretty good too!

The next morning we took the short drive back into Tilamook and headed to the Tilamook Creamery where we took the self guided tour describing how the cheese gets made.  The girls found it quite interesting to look down at the factory floor to see all the people and machines working together to package cheese at an incredible rate of speed.  Reagan found it a little less amusing when she got separated from us for a couple minutes (I’ll admit it wasn’t my favorite part of the visit either)!  But in the end we all ate some cheese samples and even found a sign with Reagan’s name on it.

That afternoon we took a train ride from the small town of Garibaldi to Rockaway Beach.  We were riding on an old semi-restored train for what was supposed to be a 30 minute trip there, 30 minutes to check out the town/beach, and then a 30 minute return trip.  Luck would have it, however, that about 5 minutes from the stop at Rockaway Beach there was a car parked so close to the tracks that the train couldn’t get by.  The crew tried their best to locate the owner in all of the nearby tourist shops and restaurants but had no luck and ultimately we had to wait for the sheriff and then the tow truck to arrive.  They ended up moving two vehicles but by the time it was all finished we had been on the train for almost 2 hours and therefore we were unable to get off and look around the town. 

The next day was our last full day in this area, so we got up a little bit early to make sure we got to Oceanside beach at low tide.  We checked out some tide pools and looked for seashells and Julie, Haddie, and Palmer even climbed up and in to a tunnel-like feature to see another beach.  

 

After our beach excursion we headed south to Depoe Bay, the world’s smallest navigable harbor, to do some whale watching.  We chose Whale Research EcoExcursions to be our guide because they are owned and operated by a renowned marine biologist (unfortunately we couldn’t find a time that worked for us where she was the guide) and also because they go out in smaller boats as opposed to the much larger craft preferred by their competitors.  Depoe Bay happens to be home to a small population of grey whales that stop in Oregon rather than making their way to Alaska to feed like the vast majority of the species, and we were excited to get a chance to look at some.  We boarded the Kida Girl for our semi private excursion with Captain Joe.  Fun little side note - the Kida Girl used to be a tender for Jimmy Buffet’s yacht, Continental Drifter.  The boat held the captain and 6 passengers, with the 6th being an employee of the company so it really did feel like we had it to ourselves.  Once we got out of the bay we caught up with a few other boats that had just spotted one of the local whales.  Upon closer examination Joe let us know that we were looking at Creamsicle and so we followed and lost him, and followed and lost him several times over the next hour.  Luckily for us when we found him we were usually close, once we even smelled one of his blows (spoiler, whale breath is stinky!), and at another point he breached less than 100 feet from our little boat!  Once he lost us for good we headed back towards the bay and captain Joe made a couple of quick 360 degree spins before heading in, much to the delight of the girls.

Cannon Beach

When we left for our last beachside destination, I chose to take an inland route with the trailer to avoid the traffic on the 101 and ended up once again on a narrow mountainous road with tight switch backs and steep drop offs.  For the second time in just over a week I was happy that there weren’t many other cars on the road as I was once again taking my half out of the middle, but probably would have enjoyed the drive more if I had just braved the traffic.  The girls, however, took the 101 and stopped to play and explore Rockaway Beach since we weren’t able get off the train there earlier in the week.  They even got ice cream (but didn’t bring me any).

Our campsite at Cannon Beach was pretty small, but we could easily walk to the beach and also into town which more than made up for it.  Our arrival day also happened to be Julie’s  birthday, so of course we made her a cake, showered her in gifts, and surprised her by having all of her friends and family show up for a party - okay, we didn’t do any of those things, but we did take a nice stroll down the beach towards Haystack Rock, the girls balanced on a log someone had placed on another log like a fulcrum, and we ate dinner at the brew pub in town.  

 

We spent the next couple of days exploring the beach and the town.  We went to Haystack rock early one morning where we got to see some tide pools and lots of birds - some local conservationists were even set up to give us information about all the species we were seeing (the puffins were Haddie’s favorite but I liked the oyster catchers) and they even had a spotting scope pointed at a group of birds that they let us look through.  The girls loved playing in the water and building sand castles and sculptures.  In town we went to the coolest little kite store and Haddie picked out a kite to buy with her own money - she loved flying it in the park! Speaking of the park, there was the perfect climbing tree there and the younger two had a blast seeing how high they could climb without any help.  We also stopped in at the library (since all the book stores in town were closed mid week) where the girls did a scavenger hunt and we took advantage of their used book sale - Haddie got a book on dragons and I picked up a Nelson DeMille novel.

Crater Lake

The RV Park we had booked for our time around Crater Lake National Park was in the small town of Prospect, Oregon.  I arrived early afternoon and got the trailer set up while the girls stopped in Grants Pass to get groceries.  Cell service at the campground was basically non-existent but they had good Wi-Fi so I was able to get a message out to Julie letting her know what site we were in and learned that they were still a couple of hours behind me (turns out shopping at Wal-Mart with three little girls takes a lot longer than when a solo adult goes)!  Once they arrived we unloaded her car, explored the park on our bikes, and took a short hike right from our campground through the woods to hidden lake.  

The next morning we hit up the fish hatchery at Lost Creek Lake where we saw lots of little fish in the main runs and a couple of bigger fish trying to climb the fish ladder from the river so they could spawn.  The most fun part was feeding some very large rainbow trout that were in smaller round runs that we thought were empty when we first arrived, so thanks to the other tourists we saw wandering that way with buckets of food! 

After the hatchery we had lunch at a cute little cafe in the town of Prospect and hiked a short distance from a roadside trailhead to a couple of beautiful waterfalls.  We are starting to see a trend where the girls seem to have endless energy to run and jump around in the trailer, just to see it fade into “exhaustion” about 50 steps into any hike but luckily Julie picked up a Tula carrier large enough to hold Reagan so she got to ride on my back on the return trip to the car.  

We loaded back up and headed towards the National Park, with a quick stop for ice cream along the way.  We got into the park and headed straight to the visitor center where we watched the park movie and the girls earned Junior Ranger badges just before they closed for the day.  We then drove a short ways down the east rim road to a trailhead where the girls got to play in the snow - the park gets 42 feet per year, so there was plenty left even in late June - and then we took a short walk and got our first views of the lake, just above ghost ship rock.  Although I had seen plenty of pictures, and we had just watched the park movie, it is hard to express how awe inspiring it was to see the lake in person.  We took in the beauty from several viewpoints along the trail before getting more snow time on the way back to the car.

The next day started with pastries and coffee provided by the campground for all their guests, which they do every Saturday.  Next came a a trip to the salon (read scissors and clippers at the trailer) where Reagan got a trim from Julie and Palmer gave me the old #4 special.

After an afternoon of bike riding and catching up on laundry we joined the rest of the campers at the communal fire pit where hot dogs, s’mores, lemonade, and live music were compliments of the campground.

Our last full day in the area was exactly that - full! We started off at Natural Bridge where we got to see an entire river flowing through a lava tube, literally disappearing for a hundred yards or so and then reappearing seemingly out of the side of the canyon.  We took a fairly sketchy forest service road to the trailhead for National Creek Falls (for what felt like a little too long until we finally saw another car on their way out and the driver assured us we were close).  The half mile hike was a little steep but totally worth it when we got to what might have been the prettiest water fall of the trip so far.  It was even better that we had it all to ourselves.  Palmer didn’t like that the spray was getting her wet and cold, but Haddie would have stayed in the mist all day if we let her.  We got pizza for lunch at a little shop on the shores of Diamond Lake and spent some time on the dock checking out the clear water before hopping in the car and driving to - you guessed it - another waterfall!   The last waterfall Julie wanted to see was going to be a 2.5 hour round trip from that spot, which was already an hour away from the campground, so we called an audible and went to the north entrance of the national park, which had just opened that day.  It proved to be a great decision since we got to see the lake from a bunch of perspectives that weren’t available when we were there two days earlier.  I can say it was just as awe inspiring the second time as it was the first.  We got finished just in time to grab a couple scoops of ice cream before the roadside shop closed on our way back to the trailer.