dare2go

Oregon Coast to Portland


Continuation from < Page 1 < !

After a fairly leisurely start, we left Bandon on Friday and drove on northwards. We drove off the road into a small seaside town called Winchester Bay. It is situated just into the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. This is an area of huge sand dunes which follow the coast for about 40 miles. Being a recreation area and sand dunes, the recreation of choice for most of this area is dune buggies. In Winchester Bay there was one RV Park after another absolutely full of RVs packed in like sardines, and almost all of them had some type of ATV parked next to them - often more than one. The town itself didn't seem to be full of the normal tourist shops, but rather sold supplies for the campers. We bought some very excellent smoked fish from a place which did the smoking themselves.
We did make a stop to look at the Dunes towards Florence at the northern end of them. Here the motorised noise-makers are no longer allowed and there are hiking trails and places to sand board. The dunes were next to a lake and families were gathered for swimming (even though we found the air temperature quite fresh and the water really cold) as well as sliding down the dunes in a variety of ways. I always find it a bit strange that dunes are used by off-road vehicles here - I always thought they were rather fragile environments that needed protection.
We stopped again briefly to photograph the Heceta Head Lighthouse, a few miles north of Florence and then made a longer stop at Cape Perpetua Scenic Area, in the Siuslaw National Forest. Cape Perpetua is more than 800 feet above the ocean, and is the highest point on the Oregon coast that you can drive to. First we went to the visitors centre which is considerably lower, but still has an amazing view of the ocean through huge windows. This is a popular place for whale watching as they migrate north and south. Summer is not one of the migrating seasons, but the bay below has attracted a pod which stay all year and we could see them from the visitors centre coming up to blow.
The view from Cape Perpetua is breathtaking. On a clear day they say you can view 75 miles of coastline and 20 miles out to sea! Captain Cook named the cape in 1778 - was that before or after he named most of our east coast? The area also has some old-growth Spruce forests, the oldest tree being more than 500 years old. We considered staying in their campground, but since we wanted to get to Portland by Sunday, we decided to drive on.
Our goal was Newport, which has state parks with campgrounds both north and south of the town. Unfortunately it was about 6.00 by the time we got there and being Friday, both had 'full' signs out. We asked at the second one for suggestions and were supplied with a map showing all campgrounds, private and public, to the north and south. We drove on to Lincoln City which has a state park in the middle of town by Devil's Lake. Unfortunately it was also full. The very helpful ranger at the gate suggested backtracking a bit to the Coyote Rock RV Resort on the Siletz River. It turned out to be much better than we expected - right on the river and several miles from the highway. The road passing by was not at all busy overnight, and once the kids went to bed at about 10.00 it was fairly quiet.
On Saturday morning we left in time to drive back into Lincoln City to find somewhere to watch Germany and Portugal play off for third place. We would have happily stayed another night at Coyote Rock had their cable television included the channel showing the match. They were very nice people, and for an RV Park, it was a fairly pleasant one.
We found a place called Maxwell's Restaurant and Lounge. The difficult thing here for us is to identify the places that are actually what we would usually refer to as a pub, which are likely to have television showing sports. We entered the restaurant and were directed to the lounge area, which looked just like the inside of a pub. There were about six televisions around the walls and when we asked the barman whether there was one that would be showing the World Cup match he replied that they all would! He was very interested in the tournament and chatted to us about what might or might not happen. We had a good lunch while we watched the match and this time were not disappointed - either with the lunch or the match!
Once the result was known, we drove inland toward Portland. The countryside changed to dairy farming land with green paddocks and hills (having grown up in a dairying community, the first thing I always notice is the smell, and then I start looking for the cows!). Juergen had read in a newspaper earlier in the week that the soccer was being shown in a square in the downtown of Portland on big screens. There had been over three thousand people there watching the France-Portugal match. We thought it might be nice to watch with a crowd on Sunday. We had checked out our campground book and discovered that the nearest campground in a State Park was over 20 miles outside the city, so decided to try an RV Park called Jantzen Beach. It is just a little north of the city centre on an island in the Columbia River. Sounds good, doesn't it?
We found it and checked in and then the situation came very clear to us - the road running by was the least of it, even though there were regularly trucks and noisy cars going by. We also had the Interstate 5 and a major train line near enough to sound like they were all coming right through the camper!!! I don't really understand why trains have to blow their loud horns continuously as they pass through urban areas. These things we have come to expect from the 'normal' RV Park. But here we had a couple of 'free extras' - the Portland International Airport in constant operation until after 1.00am and the constant tooting of the river traffic.
When will we learn? After a largely sleepless night, the prospect of standing shoulder to shoulder in a crowd of people to watch a football match had certainly lost its appeal. We had a slow start and left the campground shortly before 11.00, when the match was due to start. Since we had decided to head out of town to a Park with a campground, we thought we would look for somewhere nearer to there to watch what was left of the match. We took the Interstate 84 to exit 17 - both the exit for the Park and for the start of the Colombia Gorge Highway - and drove in the direction of the Park. We finally spotted a Pizza Restaurant and Lounge. I went in to check and the Asian owner told me that of course they were watching the match.
Once again we were the only people in the place watching the football. Several people were playing slot machines at the back, but otherwise the place was empty. It was about halfway through the first half, so we got to see most of the match. Of course we were both favouring France, as Italy had been responsible for ousting both Australia and Germany from the tournament! We were to be disappointed once again. But we still enjoyed the watching. I've never been much of a soccer fan, but I have actually really become involved in the games I've seen in this World Cup - maybe because Australia finally made it, it was a bit more interesting.
We left immediately after the result was known and drove on to the Oxbow Regional Park. To get there you drive through the countryside past lots of land used for nurseries - some were growing commercial quantities of Christmas trees. In the distance, the snow capped peak of Mt Hood is visible (the highest mountain in Oregon, where people go skiing and snowboarding in the middle of summer!). It is a lovely park in the Sandy River Gorge. We weren't all that interested in the sights and activities - we found a campsite and at about 3.30 in the afternoon fell into bed to have a couple of hours sleep! Later when we spoke to the ranger we discovered that it wouldn't have helped to drive there on Saturday afternoon because the campground was full by 6.00 and we would have arrived later than that.
After a very restful night once more amongst the trees, beside a river, in a campground with few campers since it is a weekday, we decided to drive into Portland. We went via Vancouver - not in Canada, but over the Columbia River in Washington. We had chosen it as a place to have some mail forwarded to us as it is so close to Portland to virtually be a suburb, but we figured the main post office would be easier to find. No luck with the mail, but we will check again at the end of the week after we have been for a trip along the Columbia Gorge.
We had done our research and had addresses for both Trader Joe's and Wholefoods Market in the centre of Portland, so our first stop was at both of these to pick up some staples that we can't get anywhere else. Then we found a park for the car on the east side of the Willamette River and walked across the Hawthorne Bridge into the downtown area. We wandered around a bit without much of a goal, but found parts of the old town and Chinatown, before finding ourselves in the downtown area where all the shops are. We are not much better shoppers than tourists, but we found a couple of shoe shops, so the hunt for a pair of walking shoes for me was on again. We found a great shop that had walking shoes and I finally found a pair that I bought, but what caught our attention first was their array of Betula sandals - Birkenstocks under another label and about a third of the price we had paid for the real article in Denver. The soles are the same, while the uppers are made from cheaper materials - so we bought another pair each. That's our shopping for the next little while!
We wandered on and came across the Pioneer Courthouse Square, where we had originally planned to watch the World Cup Final. They call this place "Portland's Living Room", since it is used for many community activities. The Visitor's Centre is also there. We collected some maps and sat a bit watching the world go by. A group of women started to dance, seemingly spontaneously in one corner of the square. On another part several teams of university students were setting up for some strange competition, which included water in a wading pool and lots of PVC pipe. I'm not sure what that was about!
We were impressed overall by Portland. The city streets are lined with lush green trees and many lovely turn-of-the-last-century buildings. Surprisingly for a city of its size (coming from fast paced California) the pace here is very gentle - nobody seems to be in a rush. Even the traffic moves less frantically than we have been used to seeing in other cities. According to Lonely Planet, it finds itself regularly on the 'most liveable cities of the USA' list and we can easily understand why. We left thinking about maybe going in again on Tuesday to have a bit more of a wander around, but decided to make that decision in the morning.
The trip back to Oxbow Park took the best part of an hour. It was around peak hour so the traffic was slow on the highways until we got out of the immediate area of the city, but again without any aggression or undue impatience. However, it was pleasant to arrive back in the comparative quiet of the campground.
We decided against returning to Portland downtown, much as we liked it, because we are not much in the mood at the moment for galleries and museums, and we saw a good selection of the shops and other things yesterday, which the city has to offer. So we left Oxbow Regional Park and drove back into Greshem to shop, internet, find a dump station and refuel, before starting our journey along the Colombia River Gorge.