GLUTTONY AND GOOD VIEWS

The rain that started on our return down the Rogue fell in earnest all day and night from Friday through Sunday afternoon.  The Oregon of legend.  According to the news, we got over two inches total.  If we had to get it, though, the weekend was the best time.  What’s better than an excuse to bunker in and watch football and eat popcorn without guilt?

Sunday midmorning it tapered off to a fine mist, then mostly cleared.  I had read about a bakery-bistro that specialized in croissants and pastries and had a Sunday brunch.  Say no more!  We decided to earn our gluttony and walked the mile or so across the bridge to the restaurant on the other side of the Rogue.

This place was great!  There’s a woman owner-chef and another to work the tables.  Only seats about twenty, and was doing a steady business of mostly locals.  Surprising, since the prices are not cheap, but then there’s probably no competition in this area for food this good.  Today’s specials were eggs benedict with your choice of honey-cured ham, smoked salmon, or fresh crabmeat, all with home-made hollandaise.  Yikes.  I chose the salmon, which was sliced paper-thin and delicious.  Of course, I also had to have a marionberry danish on the side.  Loni had a goat-cheese scramble with a croissant and a side of thick bacon.  Local-roast coffee topped it off.  Oh, my, we’d better walk a few more miles.  They don’t serve dinner in the off season (now), but I’d love to see the menu when they did.  We bought a cranberry-walnut sourdough boule for the road, which we’re slicing and toasting for breakfast.  We obviously recommend this place if you’re in the area, but it is NOT for anyone wanting to stick to a diet or concerned about arterial blockage.

We walked a couple of miles to replenish a few groceries, and Loni managed to step in some dog mess on the way.  Always fun when you’re wearing shoes with an intricate, deep-cut tread pattern.  She tried swishing it in puddles and scraping across grass, but in the end, there’s only one way to clean out the gunk. 

Oh, did I earn the brownie points. 

I did a check of our tires and they were all low by about three to five pounds, so it was time to haul out the compressor and get to work.  This thing only has a one gallon tank and a 100 pound capacity.  Given the volume of these big tires and the high pressures (I keep 65 up front and 75 in the rears), it takes at least two cycles to get another 5 pounds forced into each.

Good to go, we decided to take a walk on the beach we’ve been backed into for the last three days.  It was littered with large driftwood and, at ebb tide, lots of small, colorful rocks.  We purloined a handful of the latter for our front yard.

After that, it was back inside for more football and blogging.  The next morning we dumped tanks, and got underway to continue north along the coast.  The neat thing about the Oregon coast is that it is almost all state-owned.  There is relatively little commercial development blocking access or views, and there are plenty of turnouts for taking in the sights.

Our first “stop and hike to” was the Cape Blanco lighthouse just north of Port Orford.  101 goes a ways inland at this point, so we had an eight mile drive west to get to the Cape.  There’s a nice large lot at the end of the road for parking and maneuvering the rig, then a half mile or so path to the lighthouse.  It’s a beautiful setting and a cute lighthouse, in the short style that seems to be the norm along this coast with its high headlands.

 

We stopped for lunch at a nice overlook with another great view.  For perspective, that’s a person walking in the lower left center. 

There are a LOT of bicyclists in full touring gear, with panniers hanging off the front and rear.  Most are soft material, but we saw a bunch that used a different method to keep things dry.

We finished the day just south of Florence in the heart of the Oregon Dunes.  We’re at the Woahink Lake RV Park, which backs onto the edge of the Dunes.  These things are incredible.  We’re at least a couple of miles from the ocean, and these are gigantic mounds that go on for miles.  Look up behind Loni and there’s the top of the dune behind the park.

There’s a trail from the back of the park that leads straight up this dune and a view of the whole range.

That’s the ocean in the distance behind me.  The dunes were surprisingly firm to walk on.  No slogging through loose stuff except if you tried to walk up the “hillside” instead of taking a winding ridge route.  There also was a nice view of the rv park and the lake to the east.  There’s a little speck almost dead center that is the scoot parked behind the rig.  You can only see the rear roof because of the hedges that separate the spaces.  All in all, a nice park, although at the top of our price range at $32.  That’s what addiction to cable and wifi gets you.