Day 54: Florence, OR to Crater Lake National Park, OR

The drive today is taking us from sea level to 8,000 ft on the rim above Crater Lake. But it could have been a lot worse... We decide to check all the engine fluids this morning. We end up adding a little bit of oil to the motor, but a lot of fluid to the transmission, as the level is, once again, very low. In addition to that, the brake fluid is slowly reaching its low point, while we discover that we are running out of coolant. We leave at 10am and stop in the next town, Reedsport, OR. There, we buy brake fluid and coolant and bring all the fluids at good levels. Even more, we check the tires and refill them with air, and we fill up the gas tank. Now, we are good to go!

We drive then to Roseburg, OR, through the Umpqua River Scenic Byway. The Umpqua river is at the center of the byway, with wide expanses of slowly meandering water first followed by cascading waters with rugged rapids surrounded by dense forests, almost ripe for fall colors. We stop in Roseburg for groceries at Fred Meyer and for free wifi at McDonald’s.

We follow our journey along the Umpqua river – this time along the Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway – from rolling, oak-covered hills to towering coniferous forests, and from roaring whitewater rapids to incised inter-canyon lava flows. Red even sees a jumping salmon! We stop at Toketee Falls, a waterfall carved from ancient columnar basalt, dropping approximately 120 feet in two stages.

 

And that’s when another drama happens. As Yellow goes to the pit toilet, he places his camera on a surface that is not as stable as it seems. And the camera falls to the ground with a distinct sound. Not the first time it falls, but this time, it is too much. It take only blurry pictures. It is the end. For 4 years, Yellow and his camera have been traveling the world together, after his older camera died on an Australian beach. Bought refurbished, the Panasonic camera took almost 30,000 pictures in its life. Time to get a new one!

The drive to Crater Lake is long, as Bertha is going very slowly on the windy, steep road. The temperature is dropping and the clouds are multiplying. It gets actually cold and very windy once we reach the rim surrounding Crater Lake. The landscape is pretty desolate, contrasting with the gigantic blue lake. We stop at some viewpoints on the west side of Crater Lake, before going down to Mazama Village to get a campsite, electric if possible so we could get some heat in the morning.

 

As we didn’t make a reservation, we wait in line for a while, chatting with other travelers. Of course, there is no electric campsite available. Plus lots of rodents are hanging around. The low for the night is foredcasted at 34°F, meaning another night spent in the sleeping bag. We settle at the campsite at dusk, eat our Ethiopian dinner with some local cider at the glint of a flash light, treating ourselves with some ladyfingers after this tough day. And, after studying and blogging for a bit, we get inside our sleeping bags at 9:30pm.

Day 53: Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area

We wake up pretty early again this morning, and leave the campground right after breakfast. There is no time to loose, for a good reason: the sun is shining in the blue sky! It is the first day like this on our Oregon Coast journey. We drive south to the John Dellenback trailhead, the most adventurous and challenging of all the trails in Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. We read that the formation of these massive dunes is related to the gigantic explosion of the volcano that created the caldera that would later become Crater Lake.

Anyway, our walk begins on an easy trail in a conifer forest. Then suddenly, the forest opens up to the impressive Umpqua Dunes. Some of them topping 500 ft, the dunes occupy a space 2 miles wide by 4 miles long. And we have to cross that area to reach the beach. There doesn’t seem to be a trail anymore, so we just follow the foot prints in the sand to get to the highest sand dune. The day is beautiful and nobody is around. Once we’re in the middle of the dunes, it really feels like you’re in a gigantic sand desert.

 

 

We follow foot paths on the sand, but those paths sometimes disappear because of the wind. Really fast, we realize that some portions are on hard sand, pretty easy to walk on, while some other portions are this loose sand that makes the hike a lot more strenuous. We walk up and down the dunes until we reach the coastal forest, with the beach right behind it. But that coastal forest is thick, and there is no trail crossing it where we are. We are a bit lost, so we decide to walk north after looking at the simple map we have with us.

 

And after walking a little while, we end up finding the trail and crossing the coastal forest, that is even thicker than it looked from the dunes. We encounter a couple of snakes along the way and then we arrive to the beach. Miles and miles of seemingly untouched beach, with not a human being around. The sun is high now in the blue sky, the tide is at its lowest. It’s like we're explorers that, after crossing a gigantic desert for days, found a pristine beach. We hike along the beach for a while, finding some interesting shells and a couple of sand dollars. Yellow finds a good walking stick and a weird flag caught in the bushes.

 

Well, the explorers have to get back to the RV to eat their lunch. So we are back on the dunes after crossing that thick coastal forest again. And it seems that there is actually a trail crossing the dunes, consisting of wood sticks sticking up inconsistently from the sand. Mostly, we are following footsteps when they are around, and try to head east when we don’t have anything to follow. It is another 2 mile walk on the sand, and it gets difficult, but fortunately, we can continue directly on the trail when we reach the conifer forest.

Back to the RV, we drive back to the campsite to have lunch and spend the afternoon studying and planning. Yellow cooks an Ethiopian-style dinner: white rice, collard greens and red lentils. Yummy!

Thor's Well at Cape Perpetua, OR

Day 52: From Newport to Florence, OR on US-101

We wake up pretty early this morning, and leave an hour later after eating breakfast and packing for the day. We stop of course at the Fred Meyer store in Newport, to buy groceries and take advantage of their free Wifi – yes, we discover that – and Red goes to Chase Bank to change her family name.

After running all those errands, we get back on the road and reach Seal Rock SP. The park has large off-shore rock formations, probably inhabited by seals, but we don’t see any. It’s very cloudy and foggy, so it doesn’t help. It is low tide time though, and we wander around the tide pools filled with sea anemones.

 

Back in the RV, we drive to Cape Perpetua. We first look for camping, but we are so confused and the price ends up not being cheap enough, so we just extend our stay at Lake Woahink RV Park by coming one day earlier than planned. To do that, we have to drive back to Yachats to get some cell phone signal. Once it’s done, we go back to Cape Perpetua and start exploring the area. We hike at Devil’s Churn, a very narrow inlet carved into the basalt shoreline, where we can still look at some tide pools. But more impressive is the beautiful spectacle of the waves crashing on the rocks, and sometimes exploding as incoming and outgoing waves collide.

 

 

After lunch, we continue our exploration on the rocky shoreline. We stand for a long time, looking at the crashing waves, and at the Spouting Horn – a sea geyser – and Thor’s Well – a sea fountain – both driven by the power of the ocean.

 

 

 

We follow our journey south on US-101 by stopping at Washburne SP, a large beach surrounded by rocky capes, before a dramatic transition to the dunes area that we are going to explore tomorrow.

Day 50 and 51: Around Beverly Beach State Park, Oregon Coast

After a good breakfast, we leave Marvin and Grace, and drive toward Lincoln City, on the Oregon Coast. The sun was bright and the sky was clear when we leave McMinnville, but as soon as we are on the other side of the Coastal Range, it gets cloudy, even very cloudy, and the temperature drops down. But we are on the Oregon Coast! And the whole coast is part of the public domain, as some farsighted people decided a long time ago. A great decision!

 

Our first stop is at Cape Foulweather, under a thick crowd of clouds. This cape was the first sight to be seen and named by Captain James Cook in the Northwest. We then go down the Cape to Agate Beach, covered with tiny dunes. Unfortunately, no agate is to be found. On the way out of the beach, we meet this couple searching for the dock from Japan. And we learn that on June 5^th of 2012, a large dock section washed up on Agate Beach, a large piece of debris from the Japanese Tsunami. Well, it’s gone.

 

Another stop at Lost Creep SP. While Red studies, Yellow walks along the shore on the rocky beach, looking for precious rocks. It doesn’t seem to be that easy to find those agates and other stones. But it’s great to be looking at the Pacific Ocean.

 

We stop at MacDonald’s in Newport, OR, to take advantage of their free wifi again, from inside the RV. And we settle in at Beverly Beach SP campground. Red continues her studies while Yellow cooks a Greek-style quinoa salad for the next lunches, and some sautéed potatoes and chicken, that we eat for dinner with a green salad and a Pyramid Hefeweizen beer.

The next day, despite the mist and the chill, we ride our bikes, first to Devil’s Punch Bowl SP. We get on our bike pretty early, as we have to be visiting the area while the tide is at its lowest point. The Punch Bowl is a huge bowl, with an opening through which the oceanic waves come crashing inside.

 

Then we bike to Yaquina Head Outstanding Area, still through the mist.

 

 

 

We first stop at Cobble Beach, which is a magnificent cobble stone beach, surrounded by awesome tide pools. Starfish, sea anemones and purple urchins are populating those pools.

 

 

Seals and pelicans are hanging out on the rocks a little bit farther from the shore, and on the horizon, we can see the whales breathing and barely getting out of the water.

 

 

We visit the lighthouse, which doesn’t look that high from outside, but walking to the top is not the easiest thing to do for somebody that has fear of heights.

 

 

This lighthouse was built in the 1870’s, and still uses its original 1868 French-made fixed Fresnel lens. Walking around the lighthouse, we can see again a lot of whales around.

 

And it’s in the chill that we bike back to our campsite, after a 12 mile ride. We eat lunch with a hot tea to warm ourselves, and Red returns to her books and online studies. Yellow plans the next days and takes a walk on Beverly Beach, still looking for some interesting stones under the chilly mist. He finally finds some shell fossils, but no agate. May be tomorrow…

Day 49: Portland, OR (day 2)

In the morning, Jeanne leaves the house as we get up to have breakfast. We spend some time talking to Marie, sharing her personal story and taking about travels.

 

We then take the Blue Line. We miss the first train because Yellow canceled the transaction for some obscure reasons while buying our tickets. A reason not good enough to justify missing the train at least. We finally take the train, then the bus to Hawthorne District. The neighborhood has some good vintage clothes and antique furniture stores. The Bagdad theatre is right here too. It’s a theatre in bad shape that got bought and transformed into a cluster of shops, bars, theater projecting old movies and so on. Interesting!

 

We slowly move toward downtown, eating our peanut butter & jelly sandwich, decided to get some good food at one of the food carts. We take the bus and search for those carts. Yellow tricks Red into visiting the world’s smallest public garden, so he could take a picture of it. We end up at El Cubo de Cuba for some Cuban pork plate with black beans, rice and sweet potato tots. Delicious again.

 

We check out the free section of the Museum of Contemporary Craft, before messing up our beer plan. There is a Tuesday pint for $ 2.5 at Roots Organic Brewery. Unfortunately, it is way further than we thought, so we go back to our hosts’ place. After packing and saying good-bye, we leave in the middle of the afternoon and we drive in the direction of the Oregon Coast.

We stop at Winco, a store not as interesting as Fred Meyer, but with a gigantic section of bulk dry fruits and seeds. We make our way to Fred Meyer for our grocery shopping as we escape the suburbs, and we end up at the host’s place for tonight in McMinnville, OR, at the beginning of the evening. It is not the Oregon Coast yet, but a beautiful and large valley with some nice hills, especially once the sun is going down. And it’s in the middle of these hills that we meet Marvin and Grace.

We have a delicious feast outside before eating the apple crisp dinner inside. They grow their own grapes to eat, and they are delicious, the best grapes we ever had. Of course, the evening is filled with some great discussions and we end up in bed right before midnight.

Day 48: Portland, OR (day 1)

We’ve never been to Portland before, not even to Oregon. But it’s like we already knew so much about it. Everybody knows Portland is cool, has lots of breweries and a vibrant alternative scene. Plus we have watched a couple of episodes of the show Portlandia before. Of course, there is so much more than that in Portland, but at the same time, what we discovered about the city went right along the lines of what we knew about it.

But first, we need to reach downtown. And Jeanne’s place is pretty close to the Max Station “122^nd St” on the Blue Line. So we take the light rail right into the city center. We don’t really have a map, but we end up at the center of the center: Pioneer Square. The people of Portland fought to have this square be what it is today, a meeting place surrounded by tall buildings. And this morning, there is a farmer’s market full of locally grown organic produce. So Portland!

 

While Red is getting her cup of coffee so she can make it through the day, Yellow goes to the Visitor Center, where he meets this guy that does free tours of the city center. Well, he works for tips, but it seems to be a pretty cool way to discover the area. So at 11am, we meet our guide and start the exploration.

Soon enough, we get to know some secrets about Downtown, Oldtown, Chinatown and the Pearl District. We learn about the food carts that are all over the city, 700 of them serving food as good as or better than restaurants. We learn about Portland’s obsession with beer and bikes, and the habit of the people from the city to go on strike. We hear the creepy stories related to the Shanghai tunnel and we visit the world’s smallest public park.

 

Portland is like a magnet attracting lots of people. People from California come there because it’s cheaper, and people from all over the US come there because it’s cool! But there are no jobs here. In fact, the city has a pretty high unemployment rate. And there is a large homeless population – enjoying drink water at all the distinct water fountains that were installed one day by a man annoyed at all the Portlanders drinking beer all the time.

A mayor said in the 80’s something along those lines: “Come visit Portland, but then go back home.” On the other side, it seems that Portland has a lot of resource and imagination to reinvent itself all the time. “Keep Portland weird” says a mural. And we agree with it.

 

We eat our lunch on the waterfront – in front of one of the city’s eight bridges – and meet Yellow’s friend, Noelle, at Voodoo Donuts. This is a punk rock donut shop, serving the weirdest donuts in the world. And they are good! Yellow gets a Voodoo donut while Red goes for a Bacon Maple one. And we savor them while having a great discussion with Noelle.

 

After saying bye to her, we wander in Pearl District. It’s sunny and really hot. We stop at Powell’s City of Books, may be the largest independent bookstore in the world. We get a beer at Deschutes Brewery and make our way to Union Station.

We then take the Yellow Line to reach N. Mississippi Ave, a street with some nice vintage shops and second-hand clothing stores. And here is the food cart we decided for: Wolf & Bear. They are serving falafel pita sandwiches. And they are the most delicious falafel pita sandwiches we ever had. So good!

We make our way back to our place, with difficulty. Back home, we realize that Jeanne prepared a whole dinner, so we eat dinner #2. Then Red goes study while Yellow talks with Jeanne for the rest of the evening.