Monday, August 31, 2009

This was our sunset view from our Oregon cabin south a few miles from Gold Beach. The coast was fairly well socked in with fog when we first arrived and it was lovely to come home from our fabulous day jetboating with Jerry's Jetboats to this view. I highly recommend the jetboats if you are ever in the area. We did the 100ish mile tour - noon to 7 p.m. or so. They take you up the river which progressively gets wilder with a bit more rapids. The boats can pretty much race over smallish rapids and the drivers delight in giving you a thrill ride and doing 360's. We saw quite a few Osprey and Bald Eagles as well as 3 River Otters, a Beaver and a few Deer. Once you leave the coast the weather warms up quickly so you enjoy getting soaked by the driver. They stop off and you have dinner out at a family style restaurant late afternoon and then the ride back in is still fun and you still do spins but the driver keeps you dry. Our cabin was quite rustic and all alone up a steep drive 3/4 of a mile or so but it worked out quite well for us.


Unfortunately we forgot that we were in bear country. Uncle C. spotted a bear ambling down the hill away from our car in the a.m. - oops! We had left our camping tub out on the ground. There really wasn't much in it besides some tea bags, mosquito repellant, dish soap, and of course things like this aluminum foil and dishes. The bear destroyed the box and punctured the repellant and dish soap but we got out of it with minimal damage all told. Guess we should have taken those bear warnings seriously! We went to a long (but good) ranger talk about bears just 2 nights before at Jedediah Smith Park. Doh.

After Gold Beach we headed up for our last night of camping. We stayed at Eel Creek Campground if I recall correctly. We had actually stayed there on a previous visit. It doesn't have terribly much to recommend it other than lack of RVs and proximity to the dunes at Oregon Sand Dune National Rec Area . You can see in the photo above the whipping wind we encountered once we crested our first dune a few short meters from our campsite in the evening. The dunes reach for well over a mile at this location before you hit the ocean.

Here you get a little sense of just how far off the ocean is. We have never been brave enough (or foolhardy enough?) to try to make it all the way out to the ocean. You'd need to be fairly fit too - some of the sand is pretty hard work to cross! Some dunes reach 500' in height.

Here is a pic snapped on the beach near the ocean - but it could easily be on the dunes.

The next day we took a dune buggy ride. This really is a must. It was one of the funnest things I have done - a half-hour of action packed adventure. We thought we might try renting our own little ATVs afterwards but decided against it - it would have just been so tame in comparison!


A last look at the Oregon coast line before we headed inland to Portland to spend time visiting with Nanma and cousins.

1 comment:

Brad Wiederholt said...

That last shot on the coast has some great impact. The scale is amazing.