Day 4: Coburg to Coos Bay

Woke to a beautiful day -- blue skies, mild temperatures, the pond sparkling in the sun, an egret perched in a tree, a great blue heron motionless at the water's edge looking for breakfast. A quick morning walk and a re-assessment of whether those turkey vultures I saw yesterday are really turkey vultures. I decided they were peacocks, but H thought not and his eyesight is better. Perhaps emus? Not sure. A mystery.

Lots of nifty birds on such a tiny pond.

Oops. Roadkill at the RV park.

We head off to Coos Bay with only a bit of trepidation. We've been hearing tales of flooding on the 101 around Coos Bay, a huge rainstorm forecast, and waves cresting to 30 feet. A call to the Mill Casino RV Park in North Bend assures us that the highways are fine, no closures, no flooding, but the storm and waves are in fact coming. We head off anyway.

The route across to the coast from Coburg to Coos Bay (North Bend, actually) via Cottage Grove is lovely, even when the sun isn't shining, but it was today. Once we're off the I-5 at Curtin, Highway 38 starts off wide and four-lane, but soon gets serious as a two-lane very scenic route picking up the Umqua River at the picturesque town of Elkton -- a promise of creatures to come. The road winds through farmland and forests filled with moss covered trees, sometimes quite close to the highway, and we think of Ken Kesey and Sometimes A Great Notion every time. It rains here a lot, we remind ourselves, and lately it's been abundantly true as the creeks and streams we pass are running fast and high. As we get close to the coast, the Umqua widens and the level rises, so pretty soon the water appears to be almost lapping at the edges of the highway. (Hmm, no flooding, really? Well, not the highway, anyway, at least, not so far. . . ) And also as we get close to the coast, we see our first elk herd, just a couple of miles east of Reedsport, pushed out of their normal grazing area it appears, because of the flooding, but munching happily a kilometre or so away. Mr H not quite as excited as I thought appropriate, but it can't be helped. The adults were thrilled. No pics, though. No place to pull over, except at the viewing area, where the elk weren't, and the water was, but more herds to come we hope, with more photo ops.

Even though it's a two-hour drive that has no hope of turning into a five-hour drive like yesterday, H is going loony after about an hour and a half, so we stop at the Umqua Lighthouse State Park for a bit of stretchy leg. And what a delightful stop it turned out to be. Apparently when the seas are calmer, this is an excellent spot from which to view migrating whales. Not so, today. Instead we get to see the state of the surf out there. Hard to tell if it's reaching its predicted 28 to 30 feet, but it's definitely big and it's definitely wild. And then there's the lighthouse, originally built in the 1850s and then rebuilt in the 1860s -- the first lighthouse on this coast and still operating. H desperately wanted to have a tour, but we were so close to our destination, and there are more lighthouses out there, so we skirted.

Umqua Lighthouse State Park

Alien

Then on to North Bend over Coos Bay (the water) and the impressive McCullough Bridge, which when it was opened in 1936 was the longest bridge in the state, with its total span of over a mile. Very cool. Small coastal towns have an appeal that is undeniable. It's hard to ignore the vacant storefronts, but even so it's easy to think about being curled up in a chair in front of a fire in a rustic little cottage in one of these places. Whether it's Oregon or BC or Nova Scotia or a hundred other places, I always wish -- even for just a little while -- that I lived there, that my roots were there. And maybe they are.

We're staying at the Mill Casino RV Park in North Bend, mostly because it's a known quantity. We've stayed here before (when it was brand new and much cheaper) and we know it has easy access from the highway, is clean and has neat amenities, like a spiffy laundromat, and a pool and restaurants in the casino. Sunset Beach State Park is highly recommended and was our second choice, but with the weather and waves being iffy, we opted for the known. Hmm. Where's the spirit of adventure, you ask? We have a four-year-old, we answer.

As soon as we could, we unhooked the car and headed for Bastendorff Beach in nearby Charleston, one part on the bay, one part on the ocean. At the beach, the evidence of high surf was all around, with small trees and large clumps of grass washed off the sandy banks, but it was calm enough for us to have a walk and dig in the sand.