We woke up to our first morning here at the Lucky Seven Casino on the Tolowa Nation’s Smith River Rancheria. Looks like we’re the only ones holding down the fort here in the RV lot:
B sewed a skirt for her doll today:
Looks like we need a bit of Oz Vehadar Levusha review:
After homeschool we walked across US 101 and down to the beach. There’s no shortage of sea stacks here:
This beach also has an amazing amount of driftwood:
In places, the sand is covered with pebbles of all different colors and textures:
Stormy sunset:
Here’s our haul from the beach, ready to be made into jewelry:
Trish got to work on a few pieces tonight:
Tomorrow, we will sadly say goodbye to the coast and head inland. Curious about what the coast south of here looks like? Start reading at Day 76.
This morning, M and I got up early and drove down to the beach for more motorcycle riding. Unfortunately, it was high tide, so the sand was too soft for him to ride on:
We drove over to a nearby OHV staging area and M had a great time driving around the parking lot:
As long as I had the PPG motor out, I installed a fuel line quick release I’ve had waiting for just such an occasion. Now the fuel tank can be stored in the toolbox in the truck bed, instead of in the RV compartment where the PPG lives:
We said goodbye to the wonderful BLM spot in Coos Bay we’ve called home for several days now and drove south to the Coquille River Lighthouse. It is no longer active, nor does it have its lens anymore, but it’s still a neat structure:
We poked around the tide pools next to the lighthouse:
View from the jetty back towards the lighthouse:
We drove around to Coquille Point, on the south side of the river mouth. Sea Stacks seem to be common in this part of the Oregon shore:
Marine life abounds in the tide pools:
This fellow was running along the beach:
Looking north, the lighthouse is visible on the right side of the photo:
It’s a beautiful Oregon beach:
Continuing South, we stopped at Cape Blanco Lighthouse, which is still in operation. Tours are not available this time of year, and the grounds are closed, so photos had to be taken from a distance:
It’s a wonderfully rugged spit of land:
Great views were had to the south as well:
A storm looks poised to roll in:
Continuing south, we photographed the fading sunset over Ophir Beach:
We said goodbye to Oregon and arrived in Smith River, California a bit after dark, where we will be staying at the Lucky Seven Casino, located in the Smith River Rancheria of the Tolowa Nation. Long time readers may recall that we were here in October of 2013, when we built a ship and built a driftwood watch tower on the beach.
See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
We woke up to a cloudy and windy day at the Coos Bay South Jetty:
We had some pretty good wave action:
The jetty extends out into the sea:
From here, we continued south on Cape Arago Highway to Yoakam Point State Park, where an unmarked trail led us down to the beach. It’s hard to tell from this photo, but the last 100 yards were steep and slippery to get onto the beach, so much so that we relied heavily on a rope a previous visitor had tied onto a post above:
Looking north, we could see the Cape Arago Lighthouse on Chief’s Island in the distance:
The beach here is as beautifully rugged as any we’ve seen in Oregon:
In a secluded beach alcove, we found a little waterfall:
We found all sorts of shells and smoothed pieces of driftwood:
The primary reason we came to this beach was to see the concretions. Minerals accumulate over a nucleus, much like the creation of a pearl. The precipitated material here is more resistant to weathering than the host material, so erosion exposes the concretions. These concretions are roughly grapefruit-sized:
Eventually the host material weathers away so much that the concretion falls out, leaving a socket:
Concretion in sand:
A stratum of shell-rich material:
Quick geology lesson:
Moss on the rocks:
Despite the rain, it was a great experience:
We found an interesting mushroom on the trail back:
Continuing south, we stopped in at Shore Acres State Park to visit, in the rain, the formal gardens built here by timber tycoon Louis Simpson in the 1920s on what was then his private estate:
Continuing south, we arrived at an overlook for Simpson Reef and Shell Island. As soon as we got out the car, we could hear the barking of the Stellar Sea Lions:
Using binoculars, we could clearly see the seals and sea lions laying out on the rocks. The seals are the silver objects seen on the rocks in the foreground:
The light brown “pile” on the beach below the rock is in fact hundreds of Stellar Sea Lions. A few are swimming in the water to the right:
Continuing to the end of the road, we arrived at Cape Arago itself. Here’s the view to the west:
…And to the south:
There’s a one-night stay rule for the BLM land we were camped on last night, so we drove out onto the North Jetty where the normal 14-day limit is in effect. Trish made jewelry out of some of the shells we collected:
We set out our collected driftwood to dry:
M worked on completing his online OHV safety course so he can ride his motorcycle here on Sunday. It took him about 90 minutes to read the 11 chapters and complete the 11 end-of-chapter quizzes and the 50 question final exam:
Good Shabbos from the Coos Bay North Jetty! See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
Today we said goodbye to the Quinault River Casino in Ocean Shores, WA and drove south towards Oregon. We took on some gas in Cosmopolis, then crossed into Oregon over the Columbia River in treacherous crosswinds on the Astoria–Megler Bridge.
“But isn’t that the the longest continuous truss bridge in North America?” you may ask. Why yes, yes it is.
At the Astoria public dump station, I asked where the Oregonians in front of us were from. They mentioned they were from a small town near Jewell that I had never heard of, and asked me where in South Dakota we were from (since we have SD plates). I told them we were fulltime RVers, but before I got much farther, they asked if we knew Jason and Carrie. Turns out that they were friends, and Jason and Carrie had told them about our trip a few weeks prior. Small world!
After stopping in Warrenton for groceries, gas, DEF, and a battery for one of the RV TPMS sensors, we continued south to Tillamook, where we stopped in at the cheese factory to buy ten blocks of kosher cheddar.
Continuing south, we arrived at our overnight destination, the Chinook Winds Casino in Lincoln City, OR:
It’s still barely breaking 50 degrees during the day, and it’s supposed to be in the mid-30s tonight. We will continue south tomorrow.
Like the time we accidentally embedded in a motorcycle hillclimbing competition, or a Brittany field trial competition, this Shabbos we accidentally found ourselves in the narrow band of Washington’s coast that allows non-natives to dig clams for an eight-day period centered on this weekend. The Quinault Casino RV lot, in which we were the only tenant since we arrived on Wednesday night, was completely full by Saturday afternoon. All the RVs were local, and come 8pm, when the allowed dig time began, the lot was eerily quiet, until about midnight when everyone came back from the beach.
Here’s the view this morning, after some of the RVs had already left:
After homeschool, we drove into town to do a bit of shopping. I drove down to the airport, as unfortunately my dream of PPGing from Copalis airstrip was denied by high winds today. Tomorrow has calmish winds from the East, so that rules out Copalis, as the bluffs above the beach would cause rotor on the beach, but the airport will have easterly winds coming in over the bay, so it should be calm.
We stopped in at a great kite shop and browsed for a bit:
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