Central Oregon Coast

We are in Florence Oregon for about 10 days at the South Jetty Thousand Trails park. It feels like we are camping in a rain forest. The campground is thickly wooded and covered in moss giving us the feeling of being secluded. A very nice place to go for walks. We saw a lot more rain this week. This has been the wettest and coldest June for Oregon in a long time. It is supposed to start warming up soon. We can only keep our fingers crossed. Well, not while we are typing.

Hitch and Dusty have been begging to go out for a walk since we got here. Dusty is our quiet one, but when he makes up his mind that he wants to go out, he can be very insistent and loud. He gets on the table and in YOUR face attitude! “I want out, NOW Mister!” The weather cleared for a while and we took both cats outside. Dusty immediately started tugging on the leash while making mewing sounds. He was searching for grass which is hard to find in a moss covered forest. Dan finally took Dusty to a vacant space with more sun exposure and plenty of grass to graze. Dusty is a happy cat once again. In the meantime, Hitch explored every nook and cranny he could find. He climbed trees, went over huge fallen trees, and through bushes. Sandy had fun trying to keep up with Hitch’s challenge course through the woods.

We are two miles away from the beach, but we haven’t spent much time there. The beaches are covered in sand dunes. Many of the vacationers bring their dune buggies and ATVs to ride across the dunes. So far, we have only seen the sun a couple of times. On the days we did have sunshine or partly cloudy, we traveled north and south along the coast.

We stopped by the Darlingtonia State Park just outside of Florence. We wanted to see the carnivorous Cobra Lily and they were blooming so we got some pictures. The plants are bigger than we thought they would be.

Our favorite drive was going north and turning around at Cape Perpetua. The drive up was very scenic with lots of views of cliffs and ocean. Unfortunately, the lifeforms in the tide pools in that area are mostly gone. No starfish. No sea urchins. We visited quite a few lighthouses along the way. We did not go inside most of them. We did a little hiking here and there. We drove to the Outlook at Cape Perpetua and walked along one of the trails. Beautiful views if you don’t mind heights.

Our trip south was pretty uneventful. We stopped to see the Umpqua Lighthouse located right on the Coast Guard base. Civilians are still allowed to visit the lighthouse. We had lunch on Bandon’s harbor and drove through Ballard State Park before returning home.

Next stop: Eugene Oregon for some work on the lower front cap of the motor home.  We will be putting a color matching high end tough pickup truck bed coating on the lower front to deflect road debris  http://www.linex.com/  .