Finally had a chance to post the log entries from the trip, photos to follow later.
Oregon adventures July 2013
13/07/13
Left at 10:25 from house in victoria bc, Canada.
Said goodbye to parents in law at ferry.
https://cohoferry.com/
Customs at 13:30 was uneventful and painless.
Departing Dock at 15:15
Arrive Port Angeles at 17:00
Immigration off the ferry was quick, a few standard question, plus if Rupert's dog food contained lamb. ??
Gas and groceries just up the hill from the ferry at Safeway.
Out on the 101 turning off on the 112 to find camping for the night
Stopped in Joyce for map, ice. Cool store, huge chainsaw
Chat with guy from Utah, great advice
Lots of driving later, private property, found place, Deep Creek, 3 forks
Made camp and waited for T & R, arrived 22:30
14/07/13 07:30
Broke camp, had a flat tire, so we pulled over about 1/2 mile down the road and swapped to the spare, got it done and were back on the road in under 15 minutes!
Tried to use the walkie talkies Mila brought but could not reliably use them.
Nearly hit a Deer that tried to run into the side of my Jeep
Saw Salt and Sea sea stacks on way to Neah Bay
Took dirt road off to the right just before parking at Cape Flattery which went up to a great view point overlooking the lighthouse. Couldn't see much though as it was pretty foggy.
11:25 backtracking to Neah Bay went to the Makah First Nation cultural heritage museum.
http://www.makah.com/mcrchome.html
Stopped in Forks, bought camp chairs andgroceries.
Left Forks 13:23
Hit Olympic coast national marine sanctuary 13:46
Stopped at beach 4, played with Rupert, climbed a couple sea stacks, left at 15:00.
Gassed up, 235939 km at 15:22, Queets
16:35 Aberdeen on a Sunday was like a ghost town. We saw three hotrod shops though!
17:10 Westport is a fishing town. It seems the whole locale economy is geard toward sport fishing.
Found sweet camp spot at North cove, 17:30, 236097km, 460km trip
Set up camp, dinner, walk 20:11
Played crib under the awning till Mosquitos drove us inside.
15/07/13 06:30
Woke up to the sound of a track hoe coming up the lane. Turns out what we thought was a great camp spot was the county pit, and they were using it in connection with some roadwork at the bottom of the hill.
The guy was really nice and just suggested we be gone before his boss arrived.
Stopped in long beach to get my tire fixed, they found a piece of broken glass imbedded in it. Great service, nice people.
Drove out to north jetty but didn't have a discovery pass so we could not wander around.
Crossed the bridge into Astoria Oregon! Stopped to peruse the Columbia river maritime museum and lightship, SO COOL!
http://www.crmm.org/
14:45 Gassed up 236247 km. Had fish and chips on the way out of town.
Found a camp spot south of tillamook but if was too grassy for Robbie so we ate dinner then moved on again.
Pulled over to watch the sunset, I took lots of pictures, Mila and Thea went for a dip in the ocean.
Checked out a pullout off the highway, Mila said "pull in there" so I did, and put the right front wheel in a big hole that nether of us saw, was able to get out unassisted.
We finally stopped for the night at the end of a little side road off the highway just north of Newport. 236495 km.
16/07/13 foggy
Up by 07:00 drove out to a pullout where we could look out at the water to eat breakfast.
Went to the big Oregon coast aquarium,
http://aquarium.org/ parked in the octopus lot, they took a group photo of us when we came in to be purchased on our way out.
It was like a way bigger version of the shaw ocean discovery centre back home.
The GPO tank was small and had only one octo. ��
The sea otters were very cute, one was spending a lot of time orally cleaning his penis.
There was an aviary with puffins and other seabirds, and another one with turkey vultures.
The walk-through tanks were very cool! There was an intertidal reef tank, a deeper sand flat bottom type tank and a shark and ray tank.
Mila bought us each a t shirt at the gift shop.
There was an Amish family going through at the same time we were.
Chatted with some park interns near Yachats, there was a girl dressed as a starfish, a guy from Columbia who grew up in Florida, and a girl from southern Colorado. The guy from Columbia said I looked like an adventurer like Indiana Jones, he said "like if there was a big rock falling you'd know what to do"
Stopped for food in Yachats at a cafe called Wild Salmon Coffee house, which at one time was totally wind powered. It had amazing food! Many vegan options of food Mila could eat.
On to Florence. After some going in circles, we got everything we needed to drive the dunes!
Gas 236620 km.
The first OHV area was about 7 miles along the beach, it was fun but not super exciting. The road out had such big swales in it that the jeep started rocking so bad it tossed some stuff around.
The second OHV area was much bigger and way more interesting. It was almost 10 miles of beach!
We saw a fresh dead sea lion at the waters edge and two other carcasses that may have also been sea lions.
Stopped to take pictures and let Rupert run around.
Left the dunes and drove to North Bend to air up, Thea needed a new pair of pants so they went in search of pants while Mila and I did some grocery shopping.
Drove the scenic route through Bandon, super cute little town, stopped to take some pictures.
Around 21:00 T & R found a camp spot just passed Port Orford. (Actually the start of a walking trail, but who cares?)
View from the highway of the beaches and sea stacks looked just like part of the movie The Goonies which was filmed around the Oregon coast.
Made a quick but tasty dinner with help from everyone.
Mila and I had sponge baths. Feels so nice to be clean!
17/07/13 08:00
Slept in, had breakfast, coffee, etc. on the road at 09:21. Mila thought she saw a whale when we were about 10 minutes on the road.
Stopped in Gold Beach at a book store.
Saw a beautiful stretch of beach south of Gold Beach so we stopped to stretch our legs and play with Rupert, Thea went for a swim.
Two heavy haul trucks went by carrying bridge beams, they were so long the dolly at the tail end also had a driver.
After some lunch we were on the road again at 12:40
13:16 California! 13:25 off the 101 onto the 197 to Jedediah smith national redwood park, took a narrow dirt road through the middle of the park, the trees were amazing! The west side of the park was chilly and overcast while the east side was hot and sunny.
15:06 highway 199 35 miles to cave junction, had a close call with some old lady in a new beetle, she had just passed T & R in an unsafe and hurried manner then tried to pass me on a blind corner.
Planned on getting fuel in Gasquet but the gas station was boarded up.
Just over half way and dangerously low on fuel we stopped a road maintenance yard to see if we could buy a couple gallons, the guy was super nice gave me 4 gallons and wouldn't let me pay. He also gave us a lot of useful info about the caves and crater lake.
16:30 237013 km. Stopped for fuel in O'Brian the guy said we should go for food at Carlos's a Mexican food place in Cave Junction, they let us bring rupert onto the patio as it was too hot in the car. The food was great and the all servers were happy to have Mila speaking Spanish to them.
18:10 route 46 to Oregon caves national monument.
18:30 stopped for the night at the country hill resort and campground
http://www.countryhillsresort.com/ Only because they had showers got a nice spot near the creek, dunked Rupert cause he was so hot. 237037 km.
18/07/13 08:00 up and at 'em!
On the road to the caves at 09:40. The caves were too built up for my liking, no self guiding, no flashlights, no food or drinks, the next tour we could have gone on was not for another 1.5 hours so we just checked out the little cave that was open to everyone. We signed the cave register inside. (Some paper inside a PVC tube)
10:50 on the road again heading for Crater Lake.
http://www.nps.gov/crla/index.htm
12:17 Stopped in Grants Pass to pick up a few things, saw on a sign that Albert Lee had played there the night before. Damn! Wish I was there.
13:10 moving again, very hot, we stopped for a swim in the Rogue River in Shady Cove.
14:30 Hit the road again.
15:06 Made it to Crater Lake! We were going to drive the whole rim road but after taking the turn off to the Pinnacles (columns of rock formed by volcanic gas expulsion and erosion) T&R needed fuel so we returned to the village 237317 km. Fuelled up and took the rim road around the west side.
At a view point we met a cyclist kevrox
http://kevrox.biz/ who was riding up the west coast from Los Angeles to Victoria then down the east coast and ending up in Austin Texas.
19:04 left Crater lake park, turned west onto the route 138turned off at Toketee falls to camp near the Umpqua hotsprings.
Found a great camp spot up an FSR a ways even had a small campfire!
19/07/13
08:30 T & R left to try to make it to Robbie's grandmas before too late.
08:49 we left to find the Umpqua hotsprings, we had different ideas about where they were and this time I was right! Haha!
The hotsprings were nice except they were over occupied by people who seemed to need the help of other substances to enjoy the experience. I would love to return when they are less crowded. We chatted with two little boys who were there with their mom.
09:53 on the road, we were going to take the FSR north out to highway 58 but just as we arrived at the turn off T & R came back out going the other way and said it was not worth going that way to save time.
I later followed the roads on google satellite maps and its just as well we didn't go that way, it was a way through, but it was a total worms nest of little roads in there and it would have taken forever and a detailed map to get through there.
So back out to the 138 said goodbye to T & R again and headed to Roseburg. Took the I 5 from there to Eugene where we stopped for some food, Mila got sushi and I got a burger from a brew pub called the Steelhead.
12:57 took the 99W the rest of the way to McMinnville to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum.
http://www.evergreenmuseum.org/
It is an enormous facility and beautifully done, there is the main hanger which houses the Spruce Goose as well as an impressive collection of aircraft real and replica from the last 100 plus years of aviation. The other hanger houses the NASA, aerospace, Jets, and Helicopters. There is also an IMAX theatre and a water park that incorporates a Boeing 747.
17:22 we were going to go through Portland but the traffic was so bad we took a short cup up to highway 30 and headed west.
Just east of Deer Island the laminated card Mila had made for me when we were first together that I kept in the car with me blew out the window, we stopped to look for it but were unsuccessful. Very sad to lose that.
Took a side road at Deer Island to look for a camp spot, ended up finding many closed locked gates and no trespassing signs.
About 21 miles in we got to a county park campground
http://www.co.columbia.or.us/departments/county-parks/camp they were all booked up in the main areas for a wedding but the put us in the horse camping section which was very nice, large camp sites, water, firewood, etc.
I lit a fire while Mila made a nice dinner with whatever we had left in the cooler.
20/07/13
09:30 Slept in, when we got got up I saw that we had had rats around our camp through the night and they had **** all over everything.
After much dish washing and cleaning we had breakfast of porridge.
Just before we left two people on horses came out of the bush, Rupert went berserk! The lady told us to just put him down and let him figure it out, sure enough he barked and ran around a bit then went and got his ball.
Crossed the bridge into Washington at Longview and hit the I 5 to Olympia.
Stopped at a really cool farmers market.
http://olympiafarmersmarket.com/ Rupert fell out the truck window and was hanging by his harness outside the vehicle! Mila said "stop the car!" And jumped out and ran around to get him, by that time she got there I had reached behind me, grabbed him by the harness and yarded him back through the window.
A the farmers market we got some fresh blueberries, some cold smoked salmon, pak'kora, and some peaches.
13:52 Out of town we got on the 101 north to Port Angeles made it in time to get on the 17:30 ferry back to Victoria!
https://cohoferry.com/ We were the second last car on.
19:15 off the ferry, customs was a breeze, we had to prove Rupert was ours, they accepted his vaccination certificate as adequate proof.
The Deuce coupe show was going on in Victoria so we got to see a lot of pretty cool Hot Rods as we drove through town.
We got takeout sushi from Mila's favourite sushi place in Victoria, grabbed a new bag of dog food for Rupert then went home.
Rupert was so excited to be home, the neighbours cat was at the bottom of the porch stairs and he ran right past it!
We left most of the unpacking for the next day.
It was an altogether fantastic trip, we saw so many cool paces and met some really cool people, but more importantly we figured out how to travel and camp together. I am looking forward to many more trips with Mila and Rupert!
