TO THE COAST

Wednesday morning we packed up and were ready to move out when I spotted a late arrival across the road from us.  It was a Winnebago View (Mercedes “Sprinter” chassis & diesel engine) with a hitch-mount rack holding a scooter and two bikes!  Well, this bears investing.  We’ve not seen another class “C” hauling a scooter.  The owner was from Texas and owns a machine shop, so the setup was heavily modified by him.  He used a store-bought rack with a ramp, like ours, but his was made out of aluminum, thus lighter than our heavy steel.  He helped the hitch mount out by adding two stabilizer bars, connecting each end of the rack to the skid “v’s” underneath each end of the chassis.  This solved the teeter-totter potential, and helped carry the weight.  It also helped that his scoot was a Lance 150 and only weighed 214 pounds (compared to the Vespa’s 344).  He added an extension hitch off the back of the rack, with a frame to carry two bikes behind.  Nice setup.  I didn’t think you could put any weight behind a Sprinter because of cargo capacity limits.  He admitted he’s never weighed his rig, but he’s put 30k miles on it with nary a problem.

After gabbing for a long while, we pulled out and headed back to OR62 west, which ends up following the Rogue River and makes for a very scenic drive.  At one point it flows through the Rogue Gorge, which was worth a stop.

This is the home of . . . (creepy music) . . . the Living Stump!  Yes, that’s it off the top left corner of the sign.  Ooooh.

The rest of the Gorge was really beautiful.  It’s only about 40 feet deep, but there’s plenty of thundering water running through it.

 

One interesting feature is that the whole river disappears into a huge tube and flows underground for a short distance before erupting out of the exit hole to continue downstream.  I took some shots of the entry and exit, but they just look like a lot of frothing water.  For some reason they call it the Natural Bridge instead of the natural tunnel.  The entry is to the left on the sign, and the exit downstream to the right, despite the rendering making it seem like water is flowing uphill.

We made the obligatory Walmart stop in Grants Pass to stock up on food essentials and to buy another blanket for the cool nights, and continued soutwest on US199.   We didn’t get too far, but having gotten a late start we opted not to push for the coast.  We pulled a name out of the hat and stopped at the Shady Acres, near Cave Junction. 

There really was nothing wrong with this place other than being a little old.  It had modern electric hookups, but a cobbled up cable system consisting of the owner’s satellite dish, which fed into the park cable system.  Unfortunately, the satellite got only one network (CBS, so we could watch the first Jimmy Johnson “Survivor” episode) and about 12 of those secondary cable stations that one seldom, if ever, watches.

Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Norman Bates was lurking around somewhere.

  

We survived our night in Shady Acres without incident and continued Thursday morning on 199, dipping down into California (no, maam, no backyard fruits or veggies) and finally hitting US101, where we turned north.  In a short while, we were in the state of liquid sunshine,

and fabulous coastline views.

What with all the stops, we only made it to the town of Gold Beach, which lies at the mouth of the Rogue River where it spills into the ocean.  We’re at the Oceanside RV Park, which we highly recommend.  There are a number of parks in the general area, but this one is right in town and adjacent to the beach.  We can walk to everything, have full hookups, cable t.v. (with ALL the channels – whoopie!), and a dynamite internet hookup, which I’m using to post these entries.  There’s hardly anyone here, so no crowding.  A good place to hole up for the weekend, which is forecast to be rain, rain, rain all up the coast.  We did walk into town, and kept the economy going by buying a very nice original watercolor for the ridiculous price of $35 and a bottle of local vino, an “Ex Umbris syrah.  I liked that the minuscule label simply said:  “Produced and bottled by Owen Roe.”  That was it, other than the required government blurbs.  This turned out to be an outstanding match for Loni’s steak dinner.  Is that bliss, or just a blink?

Whatever, it was a perfect end to a mighty fine day.