We’ve had very shaky Internet for the past several days, so I need to catch up a bit. Last Friday, the 23rd, we were still at Winchester Bay on the Oregon coast. We went for a drive in Midget-San in the morning. I drove us out Salmon Harbor Drive along the shoreline where we found more off-road vehicle staging areas and huge sand dunes.
To give a sense of scale to the photo above, many of the pine trees on the dunes are over 100 feet tall. In the photo below, you can see fifth-wheel toy hauler trailers on the edge of the grassy area.
Donna climbed a short trail up the razor-back dune on the beach side of the road and actually saw people on the beach! We haven’t seen many people on the sandy beaches of Oregon.
On the way out, we turned up the Umpqua Lighthouse Road which took us to – wait for it – the Umpqua Lighthouse! The lighthouse on the bluff by the Umpqua River at Winchester Bay was the first on the Oregon coast. The original lighthouse was undercut and destroyed by a flood in 1864. The rebuild of the lighthouse wasn’t completed until 1894.
As you can imagine, most of the people staying in the RV parks at Winchester Bay are here for the fishing or they have toys for the sand dunes. Salmon Harbor Marina where we stayed was split between the two, I think the off-roaders probably were in the majority though. It was amazing to see the number of toys some people had at their sites.
We walked to the wharf across the marina Friday evening and went to La Herradura Mexican restaurant for dinner. This turned out to be a great choice. Authentic Mexican cuisine – the chile verde I ordered was about as good as it gets. The green tomatillo based sauce was perfect. Donna went for the seafood mixtas fajitas – made with fish and shrimp. She was just as impressed as I was. We both took home leftovers.
Saturday we drove up to Reedsport to check out the farmers’ market there. After some confusion over the directions, we finally found ourselves at the intersection the webpage said the market was at. But, there was no sign of a farmers’ market. We never figured out what happened to it.
While we were in Reedsport, I stopped at the liquor store. I had a hankering to make a Manhattan cocktail. A Manhattan is easy – there are only four ingredients, plus ice. After looking at a few recipes online, there were only minor variations. I needed to buy some bourbon, sweet vermouth and maraschino cherries. We already had angostura bitters. I had a Manhattan back in June when we celebrated my granddaughter, Lainey’s, birthday. It was probably the first one I’ve had in 40 years and now I wanted to try another.
The liquor store didn’t sell sweet vermouth. The girl at the counter told us wine and beer were sold at the grocery store and we would find it there. We tried Safeway, then McKay’s, then the small markets by the marina without any luck. At the last stop, the clerk told Donna she should try the liquor store in Lakeside. This was five miles south of us. I was on a mission and made the drive.
The clerk there told me they have it sometimes, but he didn’t think they had any sweet vermouth at the moment. I scanned the shelf and found it. Mission accomplished. Later in the evening, I enjoyed a Manhattan cocktail.
Around 4pm, we drove across the marina to the car show. There was a good turn out. We parked on the wharf by BJ’s Ice Cream Parlor and walked through the car show. Once again, I wasn’t as enthralled by the 60s muscle cars as I once was – there’s only so many variations on the theme. It was mostly the unusual, the rare oddballs that caught my eye.
A few small cars caught my eye – a customized little British car, a Japanese compact entering the US market and an old American compact economy car – I remember one of these in the neighborhood when I was a kid.
This 1966 427 Cobra was exhibited as the real deal. I have my doubts, but I’m not enough of an expert to say if it was a cleverly built counterfeit or the real thing. The real deal is very rare – many replicas are out there.
For dinner Saturday evening, Donna made pan-seared salmon with ginger and scallion topping. Delicious.
Sunday morning we pulled out of Winchester Bay and hit OR38 in Reedsport. As we passed the Dean Creek Elk Viewing Area, we saw a herd of elk in the meadow. Most were bedded down but a few were standing or walking. We had driven over to the viewing area about the same time a few days prior, but didn’t see any elk.
For reasons unknown to me, Nally, our Rand McNally RV specific GPS routed us down OR138 where we hit I-5 at Sutherlin instead of staying on OR38 through Drain. We took I-5 north to OR58 and headed southeast. After weeks of being within a few hundred feet of sea level, we were climbing. The first 1000 feet of elevation gain was gradual, but it soon steepened. We gained elevation quickly over about six miles and crossed Willamette Pass at 5,128 feet above sea level.
Our destination was only a few miles from the summit. Crescent Junction RV Park told us they had a 77-foot pull-through site for us. What they didn’t tell us was the old park had very narrow lanes bordered by trees. Getting into our site was quite a chore, but we made it damage-free. The site also sloped badly with the rear of the coach low. I opted to drive the rear wheels onto boards to raise the rear rather than raise the rear tires off the ground with the leveling jacks. The parking brake works on the rear wheels only – if you lift the rear tires off the ground, the coach may slide on the jack pads. The camp host didn’t know this!
We spent five nights at the park and had issues with low voltage at the pedestal on Wednesday. Low voltage can damage some electrical components. Our Progressive Electrical Management System (EMS) will shut off the power supply to the coach whenever voltage drops below 103 volts. This happened several times on Wednesday. The camp hosts were nice people and the park was quiet, but between the tight lanes and uneven sites along with voltage issues, we won’t book here again.
On Monday, we drove down to Crescent Lake. There are a couple of campgrounds with cabins and RV sites and a resort with a bar and restaurant along with a small store on the northwest end of the lake. We talked to the woman at the store and she gave us a lot of tips about the area.
Tuesday we got our bicycles out of the trailer and rode back to the lake. We tried the trail that goes around the south side of the lake to the east end, but it was bumpy with some steep climbs. It did’t take long for me to realize I hadn’t been bicycling in a while and the nearly mile-high elevation didn’t help. We cut the ride short after climbing a bluff over the lake.
Later, we drove out to the town of Crescent and found it to be sleepy without much to offer. On the way back, we took a side-trip to Davis Lake for a look around. The flat area around Davis Lake is mostly forested with lodgepole pine. The hills around us are mostly ponderosa pine
Wednesday we drove back over Willamette Pass – it was a much easier go in the Midget – and visited Salt Creek Falls. The Salt Creek Falls are the second highest waterfall in Oregon – Multnomah Falls on US30 in the Columbia Gorge are the highest.
From the paved parking area, it’s a short hike on paved trails to view the falls. More adventurous hikers can take the trail to Diamond Creek Falls.
On the way back, we made a detour to take a look at Odell Lake. Lakes abound around here! The Pacific Crest Trail crosses OR58 near this area. There are resorts with cafes on the west and east end of Odell Lake. At the west end, we walked down to the marina. A guy was at the fish cleaning station there cleaning a pile of fish. He told me he caught two-dozen Kokanee salmon in the lake.
All week, we had nothing but nice weather at Crescent Lake and the forecast called for more of the same, but the weather can turn in a heartbeat in the mountains. The skies suddenly darkened while we were at the lake.
A few raindrops started falling by the time we were walking back to the car. We decided to leave the top down – while cruising at speed, a few raindrops won’t enter the cabin because they’re deflected by the windshield. It stopped raining by the time we returned to the park. We covered Midget-San immediately, just in case. More rain came as we watched the US Open tennis early rounds.
Thursday brought more scattered showers and more US Open tennis on TV. It was an uneventful day, the highlight being the dinner Donna prepared. She made zoodles – noodles formed from zucchini and served garlic shrimp over them.
Friday we carefully pulled out of Crescent Junction RV Park without any mishaps. We headed east on OR58 to US97. I’ll have to detail the trip and weekend in another post. I’m still on a very slow connection and it’s taken me over two hours plus photo prep time to assemble this post.
I hope everyone is enjoying a great Labor Day weekend.