If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

Day 5 (7/15) – Breakfast from the bin of supplies. Having breakfast from the bin at least makes the morning faster. Pick a cereal, have a bowl, get moving.

Our first destination of the day was the Dragonfire Gallery (glass art) in Cannon Beach–partly because of the name. But before arriving, as we took the cloverleaf off the highway there was a herd of elk in the cloverleaf and then crossing the road in front of us blocking traffic. Apparently no one got any pictures of them though.

We looked through the gallery and then walked up and down the main tourist strip. There was a crepe shop along the way, but it was closed. So back in the van and on we went.

Our next stop was Fort Clatsop, one of the Lewis and Clark National Historic Parks. This was where the expedition spent the winter of 1805-1806 (the site is a recreation). It was busier than I expected and road repaving made things a little challenging.

Lunch was our last stop in Oregon–the Pig ‘N Pancake in Astoria. Heather was happy. The parking lot had a good view of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, known to me as the Short Circuit bridge (off of which Johnny 5 careens in the first act of the movie). The movie doesn’t have a good image of him parachuting down with the bridge well-framed behind him, but they show his view, in which we can see the location of the Pig ‘N Pancake, and a later shot shows the bridge in the background.

With lunch completed we crossed into Washington and stopped just on the other side of the river to visit Cape Disappointment. Because, with a name like that, how could you not? We hiked up to the lighthouse and I took some pictures from the cliffside. More pelicans and some rather brown gulls. The clouds were doing something crazy that I thought looked really neat.

Dinner at the Grizzly Den (a diner with shakes) in Hoquiam, WA. Then a bit of a slog up to Forks, WA (setting of the Twilight series, for those who care) and our hotel, the creatively named Town Motel.

Day 4 (7/14) was breakfast from the bin again (none of these coastal hotels seem to offer any kind of breakfast). Low-tide was just passing in the morning and the beach outside the hotel was really shallow so the water was retreated much further than I am used to.

Van packed again, it was up to Depoe Bay for our whale-watching trip. The little Zodiac took us out the harbor past the seals to a navigational buoy with some sea lions before heading on towards the whales. The expedition group we used is part of a research team led by a marine biologist who’s been studying this pod of whales for over 20 years. Her work started by definitively proving what the whales are eating that allows them to stay off the Oregon coast all summer instead of continuing up to Alaska with the rest of the whales–it’s a type of shrimp.

On this trip a mother and calf were hanging out, much closer to the shoreline than I would have expected, doing their constant diving for food to fatten up for winter. While the boat was moving Heather and I were fine, but while “stopped” and just kind of slowly rotating in place we both got a little queasy. For me it seemed to primarily be when the waves came rolling in from behind and couldn’t be predicted. The boat captain got us moving again and that helped a lot. But I stopped taking pictures about halfway through because trying to sight through the telephoto lens was definitely making it worse.

We got to watch while a research team attempted to drop a tracking beacon onto one of the whales using a drone. They missed a couple times and then a pair of seagulls decided they didn’t much care for this thing in their space and started diving at it. It was amusing.

We saw a lot of spouts from the whales’ blowholes, some “sharking” (when the edge of their fluke is visible and looks like a shark fin), and a couple of clear views of their flukes. No breaching though.

Back to land, a little walking around to resettle my stomach, and we were heading north once more. Next stop was the Lincoln City Glass Center (finally managed to catch a glass-arts facility open). Would have been fun to sign up for a hands-on tutorial, but not being able to predict when we’d be anywhere very precisely we hadn’t done that. We looked at the gallery, bought a magnet, and took a picture with this mural nearby.

Lunch was at the Lincoln City Pig ‘N Pancake. The girls had more crepes than they could eat and Heather was now obsessed with the restaurant–which is a chain, so this would not be our last Pig ‘N Pancake visit.

The next point of interest on our map was the Tillamook Creamery, but the plan had been to be there around dinner time and eat dinner at their cafe. However, we’d only just eaten lunch and it was only an hour away. So we looked for some way to kill time and ended up at the Connie Hansen Garden Conservancy (also in Lincoln City). Connie had created and tended this garden lot throughout her life and after she died the community organized to continue in her memory and maintain the garden. It’s freely open to the public all day. So we meandered about. Found a bed for Heather and Corinne was distressed by the size of these leaves.

Then Tillamook Creamery for self-guided tours, samples, dinner at the cafe, and obligatory ice cream. Since we were still somewhat full from Pig ‘N Pancake we had a light “dinner.” Fried cheese curds, fries, and Heather and I split a grilled cheese sandwich. You could get a scoop of ice cream for $4 or this flight of 3 scoops of ice cream for $9 (they were not smaller scoops). So the girls and I split a flight and everyone got to pick a flavor (chocolate peanut butter for me, orange & cream for Heather, mint chocolate chip for Corinne) and Jess got a scoop of her own (caramel swirl).

Our destination for the evening was the Surfside Inn at Rockaway Beach.

Day 3 (7/13) breakfast from the bin (cereal, bagels, etc.) and then some failed stops. No one wanted to walk the half-mile from the parking lot to see the Port Orford lighthouse, so we skipped it. We intended to stop at the Vines Art Glass gallery, but it was closed. We did pull over at “Something Awesome” but it gave off the vibe that someone with 5 teeth might come out and point a shotgun at you. It’s supposed to be a wood mill with sculptures. There were some sculptures visible, they didn’t seem to be in good repair.

So we continued on until we passed through Bandon and took a break at the Coquille River Lighthouse. The girls spent some time watching the waves crash over the rocks and then we walked along the beach a bit.

Lunch was further along in Coos Bay at a DQ Grill & Chill. This was when we discovered Oregon’s obsession with one-way streets. I expect to find one-way streets in cities, but Oregon seems to use them everywhere. In this case we were leaving the DQ and I made a right turn to head the direction we came from back towards 101, but on a different street than we had entered the parking lot. Neither the parking lot nor the road itself has any indication that the road is one way when entering it from the parking lot. So, I was going the wrong way. Thankfully there was no traffic for several blocks and it was immediately obvious I was on the wrong side and was able to turn around. If you’re going to use one-way streets you gotta keep them clearly labeled at all entrance points. So that was fun.

Continuing on, our next stop was the Darlingtonia State Natural Site. This is a prime home of Darlingtonia Californica, also known as Cobra Lilies, one of the few carnivorous plants. They’re pretty unique. They’re a pitcher-plant style trap in which insects get stuck in the digestive juices at the base. I managed to snap a picture of a wasp being lured into one. Following along with imitating the dinosaurs at Prehistoric Gardens, the girls gave me their best imitation of the Cobra Lilies.

7 minutes up the road from the Cobra Lilies is Sea Lion Caves (this is all just north of Florence, Oregon). They claim to be the largest sea cave in the United States and it’s home to sea lions. Take the elevator ride down to the viewing room and check them out.

Our stop for the night was Seagrass Oceanfront Inn in Newport, Oregon. We first headed for Oregon Coast Glassworks, but they were locking up early just as we pulled into the parking lot. So another glass-art facility missed. We checked into the hotel and then walked up the street to Yummy Bowl. It was delicious Chinese food with way-too-large portions. Even anticipating this and ordering only 2 entrees to share we had to leave a meal’s worth of food behind.

View from the hotel room:

Day 2 (7/12) Started with breakfast at the Blue Ox Cafe before packing up the van and crossing the street to Trees of Mystery. Benefit of sleeping across the street: it wasn’t busy / crowded yet.

Trees of Mystery is a patch of redwoods with trails, a gondola ride, a skywalk, and an obsession with Paul Bunyan. Take a picture with Paul and Babe out front; enjoy the peaceful quiet of the towering trees.

Our walkabout through the redwoods came to an end with the requisite exit through the gift shop. I decided I liked this wooden owl; he now watches over the family room from his perch on top of the bookshelf in the corner.

Now began our long drive up the coast on highway 101. We passed through a foggy section and I stopped so we could enjoy the ocean for a bit. Shortly after we said, “Goodbye” to California and crossed into Oregon.

Next stop, the Thomas Creek Bridge–the highest bridge in Oregon at 345 feet. There is a parking lot and some trails near the bridge, but there’s not really anywhere you can get a good picture, but I tried. We followed the trail down to an overlook of an isolated strip of coast as well. Turns out there is a lot of empty coastline from northern California up through Washington.

At some point along the drive we stopped for lunch at McDonald’s and we passed a myrtlewood gallery and took a look around, but didn’t buy anything.

Another ~30 miles up the coast we stopped at Prehistoric Gardens. This features life-size dinosaur sculptures along a trail through the forest. The girls enjoyed imitating the dinosaurs. To properly set the mood I played the theme from Jurassic Park on my phone when we started our walk.

Our home for the night was the Sea Crest Motel on the southern outskirts of Port Orford. Port Orford really didn’t have anything to offer in terms of dinner, so I took the girls to the provincially-named “Ray’s Food Place” grocery store and we bought some things to eat at the hotel, augmented it with the supplies from the van, and called it dinner. This included the world’s saddest “baguette.” It was soft, lightly baked, and inconsistently shaped with a consistency of sandwich bread. It would have made a French baker cry.

In the hotel the girls stayed in cozy bunk beds:

I’ve been wanting to take a trip through the Pacific Northwest for years, but it just never worked out amongst various family functions and COVID. But, this year was the year. We drove up the coast and took a ferry into Canada and then came back down I-5.

(I’m back-dating these posts to the day of the events for convenience of using the blog as a journal.)

Day 1, July 11, was packing up the car with enough supplies to trek the Oregon Trail and getting to the northern coast of California which required more than 7 hours of driving with a stop for lunch at a Wendy’s. Our destination for the night was Motel Trees across the street from Trees of Mystery. We had tried to visit Trees of Mystery back in 2017, but their power was out from a storm and they were closed.

We tried a couple of new things with the girls on this trip. First was entertainment. Although I prepared the Raspberry Pi with TV shows and movies as we’ve used on previous trips it only got used once. Instead, the focus of our driving entertainment was listening to the audiobooks of the first arc of the Wings of Fire series. Both girls had already read these books and like them. Jess and I were only familiar with whatever snippets we had read to the girls during bedtime reading. This worked out really well. Heather did some drawing while listening and Corinne mainly looked out the window. It passed the time and the car stayed calm.

The second was handling purchases. Rather than listen to the constant refrain of, “Can I get this?” at every gift shop and dealing with sulky kids whenever the answer was, “No;” we gave each of them $60 and explained that this was their money for both souvenirs and gas-station snacks along the way. They could spend it however they like, but once it was gone it was gone. This also worked out really well. They considered what things cost, how that related to how much trip was still ahead of them, and how much they liked the thing. They each ended up with souvenirs they were enamored by, snacks they enjoyed, and a little bit of money still in their pocket by the end.

But back to the trip.

Jess took some pictures along the drive of views that she liked. We stopped to watch some elk. And once we finally arrived at the motel, and after dinner at the Blue Ox Cafe, we walked down to “Hidden Beach” with hot chocolate. I got some pictures I really like on the beach. There were a lot of pelicans flying along the shore.