Along the Oregon Coast…’06

After spending a couple months in Gresham, going to parties and all, it was time to get back on the road and just chill out, & stay away from bars for a while. So, when I call my brother to ask him about my mail that was at his place, I discover that he was planning on coming up to Brookings to meet my sister and brother in law. Brookings is around six hours south of Portland on the Oregon coast. Just a few miles from the California boarder. Since I was going that way anyway, it wasn’t a hard choice to make…so now I’m heading down to Brookings. I arrived on Aug. 30th and was happy to find an RV park that had an opening…I’d called several other parks and they were all filled. Turns out that it was Labor Day weekend, which I had forgotten about. Lucky for me I arrived on Wednesday before the weekend or I would not have found a place to park. My space was at the Driftwood RV park. I was within ear and eyeshot of the ocean and the cool breeze and 73F temperature was a welcome relief from the inland temps of 85F and up.

So I paid for two days (Wed. & Thurs.), since the staff told me that they were booked up for the weekend and there was a 100% chance that I would NOT get a space for the weekend. I crashed for the night and enjoyed the quiet and coolness. The next morning, while I’m calling around the other RV parks in town and out of town looking for a space, the manager comes by and tells me that there is a space for me for the weekend. Seems one of their regular guests got sick and wasn’t able to make it down to Brookings so I got their space. Yeah! I was really worried I’d end up in a stores parking lot while I waited for my brother to show up. Or up the coast over an hour away.

There were two things going on that made getting that space doubly lucky. First it was Labor Day, the most popular ‘camping’ weekend of the year because of the mostly great weather and the fact that it’s the last long weekend before school starts. In addition, here in Brookings/Harbor, there was a King Salmon fishing contest going on. I was parked around 1/4 mile away from the festivities. The grand prize for the largest salmon caught was $5,000 so as you can imagine, there were lots of entrants. You could also get a prize for the largest rock fish. Anyway, there were $15,000 in prizes. Mostly cash. You could either use your own boat or charter a boat. The cost for a six hour fishing trip on the ocean was around $200, and that included your fishing license. With the possibilty that you could win $5,000.

The following pictures are of my trip down to the coast (from Gresham, Oregon) and then from the fishing contest locale.

Here’s where I get off the I-5 South freeway onto a road that goes to the coast. The sign invites you to exit and travel to Drain. Then there is a town called Curtain. What they needed was a town called ‘Sink’ or ‘Toilet’ or ‘Shower’. So to get the complete set.

Here I am passing a lake along the Umpqua River. Years ago, when my folks lived in Brookings I’d take this route lots of times to visit them. After one particularly bad winter with lots of rain, I passed a section of riverside land near here that had had a landslide.

There were two houses that were demolished by a huge mud and rockslide that had crossed the road (plowed off when I went through years ago – but then there was still mud on the highway) and ran into the houses, killing several occupants. They were sleeping when the slide hit so probably didn’t know a thing about it. Every time I pass that area it’s hard not to visualize that accident and it’s aftermath of the houses all broken and jumbled up into kindling.

A few miles later and you pass an elk viewing area. The owners of the land deeded it to the state with the proviso that there could never be any elk hunting here. It has always been an elk hang out area and the ‘no hunting’ has helped the herd expand to thousands. Here’s just one of the several groups of elk I saw as I passed the park: