Day Two of South Coast Trip

Well we were up bright and early to hit the road again. We decided to try a geocache in Brookings before we headed up the road and I discovered that I hadn’t downloaded the caches on to my GPS properly so Len pulled over and I pulled out my laptop to try again. I finally got it up and running and we ended up at this little pull out for a quick find and a few pictures. The temperature down south seems to be a bit warmer than up north because as you can see the blossoms are out.

As you can see from the picture above the fog was out in full force again this morning but as we were driving along we found a break in the fog at a place called Whale head. There was a resort and RV park on the upper side of highway and this site below. I got some cool pictures of the sand. As Lenny says I like to experiment with my artistic side. I also got a picture of a couple of Canada Geese hanging out with some Seagulls, we weren’t the only Canadians in the area.

Our next stop along the way was Gold Beach. We headed out to the beach the back way because we have learned when using the vehicle GPS it takes you the shortest route to your location it doesn’t matter if it is the worst possible road or alley. We were driving behind the airport when I saw a geocache right there. As I was wandering through the sand dunes, Len met a fellow out for a walk. Turned out it was the Mayor of Gold Beach. Len explained what we were doing so he didn’t think we were complete whack a dos, he thanked us for coming to visit and wished us a good time for the rest of our vacation. We found this memorial to all the residents of the area who had died because of the ocean.

 

After finding a few more caches we were back on the road to our next stop which was Pistol River State Park. We had to stop for bridge construction so I decided to do another cache and Len took another picture of the dunes.

 

   

It was getting close to lunch so we stopped again for some bread to make sandwiches because we were headed to the Cape Blanco Lighthouse and decided that this would be a great place to have lunch.  The lighthouse was closed so we didn’t get a chance to go and see it but Len got an excellent picture of it. As we were having lunch a couple of guys drove up and guess what they were both geocachers out doing caches in the area. I got to discover his car as a mobile travel bug.

 

 

After lunch we headed to Bandon where we explored the downtown pier. There was a number of wood carvings all over the pier, you could also rent crab pots and trap crabs right on the pier. We also visited a candy store called Cranberry Sweets. Turns out one of the main industries in Bandon is cranberry growing, there were cranberry bogs all over the area. Turns out Rachael Ray had visited the store and tried out their cranberry walnut pate. It was my kind of store, there were free samples everywhere. We also explored the state park and went and took pictures of the Coquille River Lighthouse.

 

 

 

We were planning on trying to get all the way back up to Newport for the night but we decided that we still had too much to see, so we decided to get as far as Florence and call it a night. We made it through Coos Bay again and then went to see the Umpaqua River Lighthouse which is around Winchester Bay. This light house is part of an active Coast Guard Base and is right by the mouth of the river. It was supposed to be a good place to watch for the migrating grey whales but the fog started to roll in again so we couldn’t even see the ocean. 

 

We made it through Reedsport and onto Florence. We found a cute little motel, Ocean Breeze just outside of Florence, it was in one of the travel guides, and it was inexpensive and very cute. It was very clean and had been recently renovated. We checked in and then went into downtown Florence for dinner. The motel owner recommended a restaurant called the Water Depot. It was quite a small restaurant, there was only about 15 tables and 8 seats at the bar. We got in right away, we got a small table in the corner. The place was full the whole time we were there and there was also a bunch of take outs as well. We stared with crab cakes and garlic sourdough bread. I had the crab encrusted halibut with a chili lime sauce and caesar salad and Len had a flat iron steak with rice and asparagus. Both our meals were delicious, I had to restrain myself from licking my plate the sauce was so good. After dinner we got back to the motel, watched a little TV and then went to bed. These have been very long days.