October 21, Sunday Yaquina Bay Light House

It wouldn't be Sunday without blueberry muffins made from Skagit Valley Blueberries!! We did share and after headed out to see the local light house. It is located on the southern part of Newport at the entry to the bay.

Off in the distance on that spit of land is the Yaquina Head Light house on the northern side of Newport
Steps and ladder from the second floor up into the Light area.
View from up at the lighthouse
The caretaker's house built in 1870 with the light house above. The home is set up with all the rope beds in the bedrooms and furniture of the times. It was a self guided tour and you could take all the time you wanted to see it all. There is a tower right next to here where the current workers go to watch the waterways .
Admission by donation and well worth seeing.

October 20th, Newport/South Beach, OR

We headed south to better weather. Because of the storms the day before, the surf was up. Unfortunately I didn't get pictures at it's peak, so you will just have to take my word for it. There was people parked everywhere there was a viewpoint, watching the breakers. We arrived at LTR Whalers Rest in the early afternoon. We set up close to the Schaeffers and we had Parmesan Chicken for dinner and settled down to an evening of Mexican Train. All in all a good day.

Surf's up!! So many good shots driving down the 101 Highway.

They indeed are the friendliest and we really enjoyed our 2 weeks here.

Oct 17 to 20th, the three days from hell

We headed south in beautiful sunshine and stopped at the Tillamook Factory. Of course we had to have some of our favorite ice cream. They also have a self guided tour of the factory, where you stand above and look throught the glass windows at the process of making cheese. It really was fascinating.


From there we headed south again to Lincoln City. We had reservations at Chinook Bend for a week. It started to rain as we neared the city and by the time we made it to the campground south of town, it was pouring. If you can picture this campground, you drive in off the highway about 5 miles and pull up to a big red barn (the lodge/registration/store etc). Register(pay $2/day for electricity and $2/day for cable) and then drive down a hill to the campground area. This place would be lovely in the summer time, but in the rain and cold..it was a mud hole. After driving a half mile to the site area over some very rough gravel drive with lots of potholes. We found our spot and left some nice ruts backing in. Our friends, the Schaeffers, were in the site next to us. Bless her heart, Shirley had lunch waiting for us.

What a muddy mess. We also found out that we have no cell phone service. At least they had wifi in the club house.. just drive up there through the pot holes. Using their wifi with the power going off and on was another adventure. Again Shirley to the rescue with chili for dinner. Then the wind and rain started hitting in waves and it went on all night.

On Thursday we rocked and rolled all day and we started to have power outages. The owners said no big deal, happens all the time. Then they went out completely for several hours. So Shirley and I headed to town to use the cell phones, to let family know where to find us and the situation we were in. Also did some grocery shopping. When we arrived back, Bob had candles lit and Gene had the generator running at their rig. (no generator at the logans) So again, Shirley to the rescue as she had stew cooking in the crock pot. Later that evening the power came back on and did stay on the rest of the night.

On Friday it was still raining and it was getting muddier outside and the potholes were getting deeper...did I say we were by a river? You guessed it..it looked like it was getting fuller also. We had another power outage and when it came back on, it wasn't full strength. I guess you would call it a brownout!! So we turned off all the appliances and used minimal light. We had had it. So Shirley and I went back to town to make some more phone calls to see if we could go into our next campground 5 days early. Had to wait overnight to finalize the deal.

On Saturday, we got the go ahead (another trip to town), and we hooked up and fled the flood plain.

October 11th to 17th Seaside, Oregon

We headed south and over the bridge into Astoria, then a short distance further we came to Seaside. We stayed at leisure time/thousand trails Seaside Resort and it was a pretty good park. We were blessed with a few days of sunshine so we made it down to the beach. It is very pretty here and would provide some good walks. However my walking days are limited. I am having problems with my rt. knee as a result of the fall I took last May. But we can sure watch what goes on and sit on the benches when it is warm... It is warm somewhere?.

We have enjoyed fish & chips with a cup of chowder from Doogers and experienced the shops. Seaside is the site of the end of the trail for Lewis & Clark. During the winter of 1805 they also had a salt making site here, called the Salt Works. They took the saltwater from the Ocean and boiled it in pots till the water evaporated. They used the salt to preserve elk meat for their journey back east and for seasoning their cooking.

Seaside Beach

We took a day trip back up to Astoria to visit the Lewis & Clark National Historic site. Here they have built a replica of Fort Clatsop, the wintering site in 1805. The visitor center has a lot of good information and we viewed a film on their winter at Fort Clatsop. During the summer time they have volunteers who are in period dress who put on demonstrations of how they lived and survived. The Clatsop Indians were very instrumental in helping them to survive. I also enjoyed hearing about Sacajawea and the dog Seaman.
The is a description of the statue in the visitors center. It would be great if you could read it!!

There is Seamen the dog on the left.

A diagram of what Fort Clatsop looked like. It was pretty small . They stayed here from Dec 1805 to March 1806. They only had 6 days of sunshine during that time.

Entrance to the fort.

Inside one of the rooms. this was the room where Lewis and Clark wrote in their journals and updated their maps. They also ate their meals in here. It is well worth a visit here and they have a junior ranger program for the kids.

We went back out to the highway and shopped at our last Costco for awhile and filled up with diesel at $2.79/gal. I don't think we will see that price for the rest of our trip.

October 8th, Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center

Monday the 8th we drove south to Ilwaco to Cape Disappointment State Park. There we went to the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center. They have done a wonderful job of chronicling the journey westward to find the ocean. It starts with a movie which takes you through all their trials and tribulations. It is very well done and gives you an overall idea of the project. They have many displays of types of clothing, tools, food etc. There are lots of hands on projects for kids.

Outside the center you can look south to see the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse. We were standing on the top of a huge cliff and looking south where the Columbia River enters the ocean.

The rock down below is covered with Cormorants.

This was the replica of the dugout canoes they made to use on the Columbia River. The task here was to put in the boxes so you wouldn't tip over the canoe. Not an easy task.

We went from here to drive the rest of the loop 100 around to the harbor. We could see the entrance to the Columbia River and buoy markers. It has a narrow channel through sand bars to get up the river. There are many ships over the years that didn't make it. There is a whole story about the Graveyard of the Ships. Ilwaco is a fishing village and also houses the Coast Guard that works out of the Columbia River. There is a lot of history in this area.

October 6 to 11 Long Beach

We spent a good week at Long Beach in spite of the storms. We visited 2 of the lighthouses and the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center while we were there. Because of the weather we did a lot of driving and not too much beach combing. We started off in this rv park up at the edge of the beach and moved the middle of the week to the center where we were more protected. The wind gusts on the first storm were 35 mph and really did a rock and roll on our rig. We even tied down the slide topper on the beach side.. we thought we were losing it. It also rained so hard that we developed a leak up in the shower area. We never did find where it was coming in and it hasn't leaked since. In the middle of the week they predicted gale warnings of 70mph winds,that is when we moved the rig. Fortunately it didn't materialize but turned out to sea. It was windy and rainy, but not anywhere near what they predicted.

Walking to the North Beach Lighthouse were evergreens with lots of hanging moss on them. I hadn't seen quite that much before and reminded me of the south where it hangs draping from the trees.

When we came out in the open the last few yards to the lighthouse, we about got blown away. But it was worth it to see this beautiful light house.
One afternoon, I looked out the window and there were 2 Roosevelt Elk wandering by. They were absolutely gorgeous and we were very blessed to see them The locals say the siteings are few and far between this time of year.


This is the first site at the rv park. Very much in the open and not a good place during the storms. We moved to the center of the park where it was more protected.

The ocean is beautiful and I love this shot of the seagulls with their reflection in the water.

October 4th, 2007 Trip to Long Beach

We left Portland in the drizzling rain and arrived in Long Beach in clearing skys. On our way out of Astoria we went over the bridge spanning the Columbia River. It is very high over the channel for the large ships and then drops down to river level where it crosses the sand bars. As we entered the lower part we were greeted by a double rainbow going over the bridge.

The beginning of the descent down to the river level.
The rainbows we drove under as we crossed the bridge.

Some of our favorite signs. The others are orange!! We had to wait as it was one lane through a tunnel.

The day ended with this beautiful sunset that we could see from our rig. We are truly blessed with safe travels and guardian angels.