Catching Up

This post was written Saturday, July 12th, and should have been published then. Unfortunately, we've had a hard time getting a good internete connection at this park. Weird, because it's actually way more open--fewer trees and visible obstacles to signal towers that would be nearby. Yesterday I drove into Bandon, two miles south, and didn't have any better luck there either, although I found out later that there is an internet cafe in town that has WIFI. This morning, while Ellie and I were on our usual morning walk, Steve drove over the the lighthouse and beach area with the laptop and, joy of joys, got 4 bars--a full signal. So here I am now, in the beach parking lot, computer on my lap, finally getting this posted. We had a great paddle this morning on South Slough (pronounced "sloo"), at the town of Caharleston, about halfway between Bandon and Coos Bay. I'm not exactly sure what the dictionary definition of "slough" is; it seems to be a sort of bay off a bay off the ocean, too large to be called an estuary, and too shallow to be called a bay. This one was large lake sized, with many arms and fingers to explore, and maybe only 6 or 8 feet deep. Very peaceful and beautiful, with lots of wildlife, mostly birds--cormorants drying their wings on pylons, kingfishers scolding us from shore, a pair of egrets, black murres fishing. And a surprise. As we were paddling along, we saw what I initially thought was a log bobbing along. As we came closer, we saw it was really a smooth, dark grey spotted back, and then out popped a whiskered face--a harbor seal!

I was able to contact the real estate agent by email about the house we saw for sale on Woahink Lake.She sent me a nice note, with 16 photos of the house, and an offer to take us through it any time, as it is currently vacant. The inside looks beautiful--lots of glass with views of the lake from almost every room. Oh, and a steal for only $749,000. The pictures must have been taken before the boathouse got wrecked because it was still intact. I wonder how much less they'd take. I guess the old saying still applies: "If you have to ask, you can't afford it." Still, it was fun to fantasize.

We did a kayak trip on the Siltcoos River, just a few miles south of Honeyman State Park. Siltcoos Lake is right next door to Woahink Lake and Creawox Lake (where do they get these names?); the flows from the lake three miles down to the ocean. It's a quiet little river, a lot like Beaver Creek, and fun to paddle. We saw a Great Blue Heron, a Belted Kingfisher, and heard what we think was an otter plop from shore to water--he was too quick for us to get more than a glimpse. There is a portage around a little dam about halfway down the river. The photo shows the slide from the top of the dam down to the lower level of river. It wasn't that all, or really that steep, but it was scary to look at. We elected to walk our boats almost to the bottom, and only slide the last several feet. Good choice! The angle was steep enough so that the bow of the boat went under; I got some side to side rocking and was worried about tipping over, but I didn't. It wouldn't have been a disaster if I had--the river was warm and shallow--all I'd needed to do was stand up. We were hoping to get all the way down to the ocean, but it was low tide and the river got shallow very quickly after the portage. After getting stuck on a couple of sandbars, we gave up and turned around. We later found out that you can only go the whole way at high tide; since high tide was at 6:30 a.m., it wasn't an option for us.

Another excursion was to Sea Lion Caves, about 11 miles north of Newport. It's one of those places that screams Tourist Trap; you know the kind I'm talking about--billboards advertising it for miles ahead. However, it was recommended to us by some folks from Eugene who said they'd passed it by for 40 years, but one day they finally stopped. It IS a tourist trap, but an interesting one, and we didn't feel ripped off, even with a $10 admission ticket. Sea Lion Cave is the largest sea cave in the United States. An elevator takes you down 235 feet from the top of the cliff and opens out into the cave, which opens onto the ocean in two different places. There is a chain link fence that separates the tourists from the rocky area and ocean where the sea lions hang out. There were over a hundred of them there, sleeping, diving into the water, climbing out onto the rocks. Back up on the cliff, there was a trail that took you to an outside viewing area as well, where we saw more sea lions sunbathing on the rocks below.

The last thing we did before leaving the Florence area was to go to the Oregon Country Fair. The fair takes places in Veneta, which is about 15 miles west of Eugene and about 40 miles east of Florence, the second weekend in July every year, and is described in the book my friend, Katy O'Banion, gave me for Christmas called "1000 Places to See Before you Die In the US and Canada." The book describes it as a place "to embrace your inner hippie," a one-of-a-kind counterculture arts and crafts fair held in a labyrinth of forested trails, and features over 700 artisans, 14 stages, and more than 50 food booths. We walked around for over 2 hours, and figured we saw about half of it. Even more fun than the scheduled entertainment events was just people-watching. Well over half the visitors, as well as the vendors and volunteers, were in full costume. Fairies, fauns, satyrs, and other fantastic forest folk were everywhere. Whole families, from babies on up were in full regalia. If you didn't come costumed but felt the urge once you got there, you could have you face painted, buy a set of feather wings or a mask, and become part of the scene. Impromptu parades, led by drummers and Chinese dragons, snaked their way through, with anyone who wanted joining in. We watched vaudeville acts, a puppet show, musicians from hip hop to jug band, and a juggler who juggled fiery torches and then played his fiddle atop his 6 foot Unicycle of Doom Doom, Doom. And told very bad jokes.

This morning, we left Honeymoon State Park and drove about 60 miles south to Bullard's Beach State park, two miles north of Bandon. Highway 101 swings inland a bit here, and the Oregon Dunes are between the highway and the ocean, so we couldn't see the ocean at all. Instead of the ocean on our right, we got lake after lake and river after on our left, right next to the highway. We stopped at the Mill Casino for lunch, hoping to hit the much-touted weekend seafood buffet, but alas, it was only available for dinner, not lunch, and we were way too early. We contented ourselves with a nice meal at the restaurant, overlooking Coos Bay, and then moved on (after a brief but refreshing stop at the quilt shop in town).

Bullard's Beach State Park, about two miles north of Bandon, despite the name, is a good mile from the actual beach. The Coquille River is just as close, and flows into the ocean about three miles away; there's a lighthouse there. This is premier paddling country with all the rivers and lakes nearby, and the ranger provided us with a pamphlet full of information about easy paddling trips. We also have some paddling guides to the area that Scott and Jan Bolton, from the Skinny Winnie Rally at Nehalem Bay, lent us, so we ought to be all set for some great paddles.