RVing With Ron & Brenda

Chapter 5

After all the talking and planning, it finally happened. We sold the house in the first week of July, with closing on August 5. Brenda and I have spent the last few weeks selling stuff, making dump runs and donations to Goodwill; generally emptying the house. In addition, we have been setting up the trailer as our full time home. Not surprisingly, Brenda has been planning where to hang pictures and the placement for the objet d’art that we have, such as the cat that has been a fixture in our house for many years, as well as special pictures that we want to hang on to. The trailer is starting to look like a real home.

So of course, with all of the activity that needed to happen in a few weeks, we took a short vacation (9 days), that we had planned for several months. It’s a return trip to the Oregon Coast, this time meeting up with Jonathan and Helene for a few days.

Right now (as I’m writing this) we’re sitting in a very nice campground near Bandon. This is one of the nicest RV parks we’ve stayed at. Most parks try to squeeze as many sites onto the property as they can, but these guys have left a lot of open space around the property, as well as making each RV site larger than usual. Plus, the daily rate is about 2/3 of the rate we normally spend. The only down side is the wind. It’s enough to prevent sitting comfortably outside. But the temperature isn’t cold, so in total, it’s not too bad.

We took a walk around Old Town Bandon, by the waterfront, had lunch, then a latte and shared a large, freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. See, divesting ourselves from home ownership and becoming wandering vagabonds has turned us into a couple of wild and crazy guys! Coffee and cookie in the middle of the day!

We visited an interesting museum in town called Washed Ashore. It’s a project that was started to bring attention to the growing problem of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans. Volunteers collect plastic waste that is then used to create some really fantastic works of art. In Chapter 4, I described our first trip to Oregon, and included photos of a puffin that was made from various plastic parts such as flip flops, bottles, tooth brushes, combs, etc. The Washed Ashore museum in Bandon had several art pieces that really brought home the scope of the pollution problem. Seeing one piece was interesting but the impact was greatly increased when viewing dozens of such pieces. Considering the amount of plastic that went into each piece, the number of pieces on display and the realization that we are seeing just a small part of the total problem helped to wrap my mind around the enormity of the problem.

If you look closely, you’ll be able to recognize some of the plastic bottles and other items that the art pieces are constructed of.

Check out washedashore.org for more information. They do traveling exhibits around the country and you might be interested in visiting one of them or possibly arranging to have a tour come to your town.

A walk on the beach brought us to two unusual rock formations. See if you can recognize the features:

This trip took us further north on the Oregon coast, and we were able to take a day trip to Astoria where we crossed a six mile bridge across the mouth of the Columbia River into Washington state. We had driven along the Columbia River further upstream, and that was beautiful, but the ocean end of the river was truly spectacular. We were treated to an unusual sight; a whale had made it’s way further upstream than normal, and he/she spent a lot of time in the middle of the river swimming around and feeding. Below are photos taken as we crossed the bridge. It was very high and very long!

The vantage point from where we watched the whale was called Clark’s Dismal Nitch, named when the Lewis and Clark expedition was trapped at the spot for six days because of heavy wind and rain. Fortunately, the day we were there was not dismal!

A few days later we drove into Tillamook, visiting the air museum and the Tillamook Dairy. The air museum was small, but ambitious, being housed in a large airship hanger that was built during WWII for the blimps that patrolled the coast looking for enemy submarines, and protecting allied shipping. The hanger was constructed entirely of wood because of the shortage of steel and aluminum that was needed to built planes, tanks and ships. The photo shows the carefully designed structure that provided a stable building for the blimps that were parked inside.

At the Tillamook Dairy I had the strange sensation that we were being “looked at” by someone or something. Must have been my imagination!

After four days in the Tillamook area, we drove south to Newport where we met up with Jonathan and Helene who had just finished several days touring Portland. Brenda and I stayed at the Port of Newport RV Park and Jon and Helene stayed at a B&B on a stern wheeler that was moored at the port.

Located on the Newport harbor and marina gave us a nice vista. We had dinner at the local brewery, which was located in the harbor complex, allowing us to walk everywhere. The next day we drove a few miles north to Depoe Bay State Park where we were again treated to a whale (of a) show (chuckle, chuckle), this time two or three whales were swimming around within 100 yards of our vantage point. They were clearly feeding, and we watched them as they swam in circles underwater, blowing bubbles that formed a wall, trapping the fish and making for easy feeding.

We were in Newport for two days after which Jon and Helene headed back to Portland for the flight back to Austin, and Brenda and I drove to Port Orford for one night before heading back to Willits. We got to Port Orford early enough to drive down to the bluffs overlooking the ocean and sat for awhile on benches that had been set up for visitors.

The Octopus tree at Mears Refuge was an interesting and unusual sight.

We visited a couple of lighthouses – something that Jonathan was interested in seeing.

One of the things that impressed us about the region was the attention that was given to providing vantage points for visitors to enjoy the views. Whether it was a hillside park or built up overlook, there were always nice amenities to enhance the experience, such as artistic benches to sit on or interpretive signs to explain what we were seeing and a bit of the history of the place.

The RV park we stayed at was small but very nice; not fancy, just a comfortable, friendly place that we will be returning too for a longer visit.

The drive back to Willits was uneventful, and we arrived around 5 pm to get ready for the next 7 days when we had to finish packing everything up.

We’ll get into that in the next chapter.