Finding America

We started heading north today from Eureka towards the Oregon border. Not too far up the road we came across a beautiful little glen with an old red schoolhouse and grazing all around the field was a heard elk – yeah that’s what we said – “look a heard of elk!!!!!”.

We also had a very interesting stop off at a 5 building town that seemed to specialize in burl wood carvings. Not sure the town is on the map but talking to the interesting young man behind the counter of Bill’s Burls, the carver’s apprentice, and pursuing the fascinating menagerie of burl wood kitsch made us confident that this little carving enclave needed a name.

Along the way we had a couple great coastal views and then came across an awesome monument. Overlooking the parking lot of the Trees of Mystery attraction was a partnership from my childhood lore. Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue ox. Heck yeah Paul Bunyan was huge you’ll have to see the video.

We stopped at the border of Oregon to document the crossing and dance a little jig.

Just after the border crossing we pulled up to a tourist info center to get some ideas of what to do on the Oregon coast. Loaded with our “to see” list we hopped back on the road and drove up to Gold Beach for lunch at the Porthole restaurant. The Porthole is located in a remodeled cannery. As the fishing industry diminished the city decided to make a change to attract tourists and now the old cannery houses shops and restaurants and is a launching point for jet boat tours of the coast. Lunch was adequate, but certainly didn’t win any awards.

At lunch however we heard several people commenting about how nice the weather was. Granted it was a beautiful day but it was pretty par for the course for us Floridians. The comments did, however, remind us that the Pac NW is supposed to be notoriously cloudy and rainy. I guess we’ll hop on the band wagon then and bless the good Lord for the fine weather.

We did a fair bit of itinerary planning over lunch and then got back on the road. A few miles down the road I pulled over to a gas station to fuel up. I hopped out of the car, put my visa in the machine and lifted the hose from the pump just in time to see a fellow in everyday street clothes coming my way. I was a bit concerned as he looked focused on me.

“Hey there bub. Whacha doin.” Ahhhh excuse me……

Turns out Oregon State law prohibits customers from pumping their own gas. Ha – LOL – full service gas station at no additional cost. When I chuckled about this the attendant said hey we don’t have a state sales tax either. Well if not for the annual rainfall I’d say the citizen’s of Oregon have it pretty good.

Not far beyond the gas station we passed the RV park we were planning on staying at but it looked a little seedy so we continued on. Just shy of Florence, OR we found a terrific RV park. We threw some clothes in the wash and then went to explore the massive sand dunes which literally towered over our campsite.

The preserve was really cool with its crystal clear ponds, tree islands and sloping dunes, it was a natural playground. We spent a good hour exploring and playing in the dunes and ponds. Tuckered out we walked back to the park across the road to Lake Woahink and we spent a little while relaxing on the dock after our dune trek. Wrapping up the afternoons adventures we returned to Kodi to grill up some dinner, finish the laundry and catch a riveting episode of LOST!!!!