Sunday ; Sunset Bay State Park to Beverly Beach State Park, Oregon
This morning we left the campground at Sunset Bay State Park and drove a mile or two on the state park road to Shore Acres, an ocean viewpoint and sight of a seven acre botanical garden. A hundred years ago or so Shore Acres was developed as a personal estate by a lumber baron. It’s now a day use Oregon State Park. We parked in the parking lot, got out of the truck, and I realized I had left my cigarettes and lighter sitting on the picnic table in our campsite. ( sigh ) So back to the Sunset Bay campground we went to pick them up, then returned to Shore Acres. I took some photos from the viewpoint high above the ocean, then we walked around a bit of the botanical gardens. We drove another mile or two up the state park road to see Cape Arago, another high viewpoint looking out over the ocean and rugged beach beneath the cliffs we were standing on.
We drove back down and out of the state park and over to the little fishing village of Charleston. We stopped at Chuck’s Seafoods to buy some fresh fish. MMMMM … bought fresh Dover Sole fillets, Arrowtooth fillets, smoked oysters, and Dungeness Crab meat. Between Charleston and Coos Bay we stopped to buy a few bundles of firewood. We anticipate having some campfires with our friend Julie over the next few days at Cape Lookout where we are meeting her, probably tomorrow. Finally before leaving the area and getting back on the road we stopped at Wal-Mart in Coos Bay. I refuse to go into Wal-Marts on weekends, so Joanne went to do the shopping. I took Bo for a walk, then took Sully for a walk, then went into the trailer, turned on my computer and … WOO-HOO … an unsecured access Wi-Fi signal in the Wal-Mart parking lot. I haven’t had Internet access for the last five days. I got caught up on e-mail and investment status data, and downloaded some Windows and Adobe updates. Joanne still wasn’t finished shopping so I started working on this journal entry. When Joanne returned from shopping we had lunch … MMMMM … fresh smoked oysters on crackers with cream cheese … then hit the road. It was a very late start to our day’s driving.
We continued north on Hwy. 101 following the Pacific coast. We refilled with diesel in Florence and a few minutes later stopped at a roadside viewing area to see … HUH ? … carnivorous plants growing in a bog ? ! ? Darlintonia Californica plants ! Hey, Bo, better stay on the boardwalk. HA HA HA ! We stopped at a roadside viewing area where the Bob Creek flows into the Pacific Ocean. We stopped for the night at Beverly Beach State Park. We got set up in a site, then walked over to the beach. Saw some whales breaching offshore. We wanted to get this far today because Beverly Beach State Park has a few sites with cable TV. We wanted to see Amazing Race. ( sigh ) Which was pre-empted tonight by a country music awards show ( sigh ). I spent the evening processing the photos I took over the last few days.
Today was cloudy and warm, with a few drops of rain in the morning and steady light rain in the evening.
We departed Beverly Beach State Park this morning and backtracked about ten miles south on Hwy. 101 to the city of Newport to visit the Oregon Coast Aquarium. We had been there before, about five years ago, and decided it was worth a return visit. We weren’t disappointed. The Oregon Coast Aquarium has huge indoor display tanks and outdoor display pools. Outdoors there was a pool for sea otters, one for sea lions and harbour seals, and one for aquatic birds, including some species of auks, sort of the Northern Hemisphere equivalent of penguins. Indoors there were small and large display tanks, some of them “walk through” tunnels. WOW ! Most of the indoor displays were exhibiting sea life found in the Pacific Ocean along the Oregon coast.
We spent about three hours in the aquarium, had a very late lunch in the parking lot, then headed north on Hwy. 101. Near Tillamook we turned onto Three Capes Scenic Loop. At the south end there is Cape Kiwanda, in the middle is Cape Lookout, and on the northern end is Cape Meares. We were planning to meet our friend Julie at Cape Lookout State Park where she is going to live for the next 3½ months while she WorkCamps at Cape Meares National Wildlife Refuge as a birding interpreter.
We found our way to Cape Lookout State Park and found a campsite “across the street” from Julie who had arrived a few hours earlier. We visited with her briefly, then got set up in our site, just as it began to rain. We invited Julie over for dinner. I prepared the fresh Dover Sole we bought yesterday. We visited with Julie for the evening.
( sigh ) We’ve been to Cape Lookout State Park before. We were here five years ago. It’s where we blew the transmission ( for the first time ! ) on our previous truck, Dee-Dee, while backing into an uphill sloped campsite. We spent the next week in Tillamook waiting for the transmission to be rebuilt.
Tuesday ; Tillamook
Today was cold and wet. BRRRRR ! ! ! This is why I’m not fond of driving along the coast in April or November.
We got a bit of a slow start to the day. I needed to sleep in a bit. We had an early lunch then decided to head into the nearby small city of Tillamook to run some errands. My priority was to make some phone calls and get Internet access. As we were leaving, Julie was just returning from a meeting with her “boss” regarding the WorkCamping job which she is to start this week. She came along with us to Tillamook to run errands. We drove into Tillamook, about eleven miles away and found our way to the public library. Julie and I went into the library to use Wi-Fi and Joanne went to buy some groceries at the Safeway across the street from the library, then explore “downtown” Tillamook on foot.
I was in the library for a couple of hours but I got a lot accomplished, by phone and online. When I was finished we decided to go visit Tillamook Cheese. The weather was too bad to do anything else. Tillamook Cheese is the large cheese factory in Tillamook that probably forms the backbone of the local industrial economy. We walked around the second floor viewing area overlooking the cheese factory below. It was very interesting. We went downstairs to their cheese and ice cream shop, bought some fresh squeaky cheese curds to take home, and some ice cream to eat there. On the drive back to the campground we drove around Tillamook to familiarize ourselves with the small city. Back at the campground we ( including Julie ) took Bo and Triscuit ( Julie’s Powderpuff Chinese Crested ) for a walk around the campground and over to the beach. BRRRRR … cold, windy, huge waves.
Joanne invited Julie over for supper, and made pizza. After supper we visited with Julie for awhile, then she went home … with a Coconug ! HA HA HA ! I worked on the photos I took yesterday at the Oregon Coast Aquarium.
Wednesday ; Cape Kiwanda & Pacific City
Another cold, windy, wet day ! This morning I did some repairs on Julie’s rig. And thanks to my own stupidity and carelessness, I ruined the top of our dinette table in the process ! I certainly have been making a lot of mental errors these last few days ! I was using glue to repair a broken plastic part from the exterior door of Julie’s rig. I needed a workbench. It was too cold and wet to use the picnic table outside so I used our dinette table. And had a “glue accident“. And then tried using acetone to remove the glue. And ruined the top of the table ( sigh ). Joanne began working on repairing it. It will require a lot of sanding then varnishing.
Julie invited us out for lunch. We drove south on the Three Capes Scenic Loop to Cape Kiwanda at the south end, and the adjacent village of Pacific City. We had lunch at Pelican Pub & Brewery, a seafood restaurant and micro-brewery overlooking the ocean. KA-CHING ! Julie and Joanne had fish and chips. I had a bowl of Tillamook Cheese and beer soup, and an oyster po’ boy. After lunch we walked onto the beach and along the beach to a rocky area beside sand dunes at the edge of the bay, and explored tidal pools amongst the rocks. Very cool ! ! ! Lots of different sizes and colours of anemones and sea stars / star fish. The beach was also a boat launch area, so I drove Lanoire onto the beach and tore around in the sand and surf. HA HA HA … there goes Daniel, destroying the environment with his honkin’ huge six wheel drive truck.
We parked by a local restaurant that offered free Wi-fi, and sitting in the truck in the restaurant parking lot, used their Wi-Fi signal. Julie and I did our online work for the day, then we drove back to Cape Lookout State Park. Joanne and Julie went for a long walk with the dogs and I went for a brief nap with Sully.
In the evening I built a campfire and we sat around the campfire visiting with Julie until late at night.
Thursday ; Today was mostly sunny and mild, a bit windy at the beach.
This morning I completed some repairs on Julie’s rig. I installed a new cable TV hatch and installed a bracket on the inside of her exterior screen door to mount a wind chime which is now a sort of door chime. Julie prepared a large bowl of oyster chowder for lunch for all of us.
After lunch while the women did some chores and took the dogs for a long walk, I spent the afternoon doing “administrative” work. I reconciled our monthly MasterCard statements. I prepared instructions to our investment broker on what to do and how to do it, to get the funds I need to pay this month’s bills. I did some work on our income tax returns which I haven’t worked on for about a week, despite my intentions to work an hour a day on them.
Late in the afternoon we hitched the truck to the trailer. We have to move to another campsite tomorrow because the one we are on is reserved for the weekend. I built a campfire. A bigger one than yesterday ! Joanne and Julie had been moaning and whining repeatedly today about how cold they were last night around the campfire because I built such a puny little campfire. Hey, I was trying to conserve our limited supply of firewood. We ate a simple supper sitting by the campfire then visited until way too late … again.
Friday ; Tillamook
Today was mostly sunny but cold. It started to rain late in the afternoon. This morning we had to move to another site in the campground. Fortunately we found a site on the same loop as we were, and still fairly close to Julie, that was not reserved for the weekend. We left Bo in the trailer while we relocated, which only took a few minutes to get from one site to the other. Bo was very upset that he had to stay in the trailer while we went “drivey” to a “new place”. He seemed unaware that we were 500 feet from where we had been before ( rolling eyes ). And then, in a few minutes … WOO-HOO … HEY, LOOK … MY FRIEND TRISCUIT IS ALSO AT THIS NEW PLACE ! Sometimes Bo is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. After relocating we went to Tillamook to get online at the library and run some errands. Julie came along.
We did our online work at the library, then drove to the north side of town towards Tillamook Cheese Factory. Joanne wanted to check their daily inventory of packaged “end cuts” which are sold at a discount. I stopped at a service station and refilled an empty propane tank. We stopped at a hardware store to buy some hardware I needed to “fine tune” one of the jobs I did on Julie’s trailer. At the hardware store Joanne found a wood frame kit to create a “raised garden”. She liked it, we bought it. We went to Fred Myers, a large grocery store, and refilled a water jug. Finally we made it to Tillamook Cheese Factory. Today’s inventory of cheese end cuts wasn’t to our liking, but we bought some awesomely good ice cream.
We returned to Cape Lookout State Park and had a communal lunch of shared leftovers. I napped with the animals. I did a bit of minor maintenance. BRRRRR ! ! ! Joanne and Bo went for a walk with Julie and Triscuit. I did some accounting work, then worked on our income tax returns for awhile. Julie prepared supper for all of us, a wonderful smoked salmon and smoked oyster creamy pasta dish. She cooked supper in our rig because our kitchen is a bit more spacious than hers. After supper none of us wanted to sit by a campfire in the cold rain, so no campfire tonight.
Saturday ; Cape Meares & Tillamook
COLD ! WET ! YUCK !
Today was Julie’s first day of “work”. She is “working” at Cape Meares, about ten miles north of Cape Lookout. It is the most northerly of the Three Capes on the Three Capes Scenic Loop. At Cape Meares is a lighthouse, and a bird viewing platform. Julie works on the bird viewing platform, answering questions about birds, and perhaps most importantly, setting up and manning a birding scope aimed at a Peregrine Falcon nest. Her “employer” is U.S. Fish & Wildlife, and in exchange for her “volunteering” she is provided with her campsite here at Cape Lookout State Park. That’s what’s known as “WorkCamping”.
Our plan was to go and visit Julie at “work” today. But this morning was … YUCK ! I did a couple of minor maintenance chores. Around noon the rain stopped and the sky cleared a bit. We had an early lunch and headed off for Cape Meares. When we arrived there, the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds occasionally. We were surprised to find that there were a lot of people there, and Julie’s bird viewing platform was pretty busy. We visited with her briefly, and viewed the two Peregrine Falcons and their nest through the scope. We walked down the trail to Cape Meares Lighthouse. Beautiful views. The lighthouse had been vandalized a couple of months ago by local hoodlums who shot out eleven of the lighthouse’s glass panes. What a tragedy ! Original glass panes from the 1800’s destroyed ! We walked over to see the Octopus Tree, an old Sitka Spruce with many trunks coming out from just above the ground.
We drove from Cape Meares to Tillamook to do some shopping. We wanted to look at some folding director’s chairs that were on sale at Fred Meyers. We bought a couple of them for our new, soon to be built, cedar gazebo. And I bought a new folding step stool to replace the one that broke a few days ago. I use it to get in and out of the truck bed.
We returned to Cape Lookout State Park. Julie was home from “work”. When I bought a Fantastic Fan pop in screen recently, it came in a package of two. I only needed one. Julie wanted the other one so I removed her screw in screen and replaced it with the pop in one. Joanne and Julie went for a long walk on the beach with Bo and Triscuit. I did some computer work in the trailer, then went to Julie’s site to start a campfire. Joanne and Julie returned from their beach walk with two very tired dogs. They had been romping on the beach off leash. We sat around the campfire for only a few minutes when … ( sigh ) … it began to rain again. We abandoned the campfire and went inside to prepare supper.
While Joanne worked on preparing supper for the three of us, and again after supper, I worked on photos. I had taken a lot of photos today of Julie’s “workplace”. I downloaded them from my computer and “processed” them, adding captions, cropping some of them, enhancing the lighting on some of them, that sort of thing. For dessert after supper we had TillaMOOk Ice Cream, with peanut butter filled little chocolate cows in the ice cream. HA HA HA … MMMMM ! After supper Joanne and Julie visited, and when I finally finished with the photos I copied them onto a DVD for Julie.
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