Home Again

There is some advertisement for a luxury car with the tag line, “The Journey is the Destination.” I suppose that is a fair description of our very long trip home.

We left China Mountain House around 9:30. It was our first foggy day in Port Orford, and the very grayness helped nudge us to pack the car and depart. The dogs were particularly anxious. They always seem to fear that we will leave them behind. But we never do.

In fact, after about an hour on the road, we stopped at Samuel Boardman State Park to let them stretch their legs. This narrow park stretches on either side of the highway for about a dozen miles and it contains some of the best post card scenery of the southern Oregon coast.

We continued on through charmless cities Brookings and Crescent City. We went through the towns in the interior of Mendocino county. We stopped briefly in the redwoods because dogs ought to see California’s most majestic trees.

But would they look up and be inspired by these ancient solemn trees? No, siree, Bob. They only wanted to smell the ground!

The dogs had their final stretch break in Berkeley. Had we had more time I would have walked them around campus to help them improve their minds. But we were short of time, so they only were able to walk around the marina.

There had been some kind of kite festival earlier, and we there were still one or two kites in the air.

We drove a little further, and stopped to have a quick bite to eat at Panda Express in Brentwood. When I left the Bay Area in 1985, I am not sure there was even a town there. As night fell, took over the driving duties from John and I drove home down the long stretch of highway 5 and up the Grapevine. We arrived home at 1:30 am today.

So, here  is to another road trip!

Last Day

For our last day in Oregon, we first spent a the morning enjoying the lovely view from China House. But since we probably will not be back to this part of the world for a while, we decided to explore a bit of Port Orford and neighboring areas.

There’s not a whole lot of town here in Port Orford. You might barely notice it if you were driving on Highway 101. The only thing that might catch your attention is the local movie theater and its mural.

But with a little advice from a good guide book, you would also come across Susan’s Chocolates nearby. Susan – she’s the one in the picture below – makes scrumptious truffles and nougats by hand. They’re delicious!

From Port Orford, we headed north to the Seven Devils Recreation Area. I have no idea who give this empty stretch of beach this name or why they did it, but for the dogs it might as well have been Seven Angels. They were in heaven there! John was a little less thrilled because it was cold and windy.

From there we drove a little south to the town of Bandon. John says that a number of years ago we spent an afternoon here riding bicycles and we were quite taken with the town. I only vaguely recall this, but my poor memory is the principal reason for keeping this blog. I was not that enchanted with it on this visit. The dogs definitely gave it four paws down because there was not a bowl of water anywhere.

We then traveled on to the New River ACEC. I have never heard of an ACEC before, but apparently it is a government designation for “Area of Critical Environmental Concern.” The New River supposedly formed in the late 19th century after some flooding. The area was used as pasture for a while, but now it is habitat for many different kinds of birds including the snowy plover. It was pleasant enough hiking through the scrub forest, but the dogs, who have no particular interest in birds, were somewhat bored.

We returned to our delightful rental mansion to drop off the beasts and take a short rest. There are a number of interesting bits of furniture in it. This coffee table is probably the most striking.

We decided to skip cooking this evening and to to the local foodie hangout, Redfish. We called for a reservation but were told they were full. Nevertheless, we showed up and they somehow managed to find a table for us.

The food was excellent, and remarkably cheap. We had our second-best dinner in Oregon (our repast at Avignon in Portland being the best) for a mere 44 dollars. There was entertainment, too. Gary, our landlord was playing jazz guitar at the restaurant this evening. He is the one on the right. He has a strong musical background. He dropped out of architecture school to play guitar with some major bands. He said that He said he owed his success to drugs because he usually found himself with a job when one of the musicians had to go into rehab!

Outside the restaurant is Battle Rock, the scene of resistance from the natives to whites arriving with “land claims” in 1850.

Back at China House, we enjoyed our last sunset.

Tomorrow, it’s back to Los Angeles and the world of work.

Port Orford

We spent the morning at the enjoying China Mountain House. While the view is spectacular from the deck, Edie found the rope sculpture far more fascinating. I don’t think she has ever seen anything quite like it.

John found a spot where he could both enjoy a book and the view.

When he tired of reading, John decided it was time for some exercise.

Still, after a while we decided to do some exploring. And the logical place to start was just north of here at Cape Blanco.

I must freely admit that I did not take this picture but borrowed it from NASA. Cape Blanco can be seen as the farthest point on the left. The name supposedly comes from Spanish explorers who sailed past the area and called it “Cabo blanco.” George Vancouver called it Cape Orford, but his name only stuck to the nearby town. Cape Blanco is generally considered the most western point in the contiguous states. It is also one of the most seismically active spots on the continent as well, and the land rises several millimeters a year.

Because of its location, and the rocks and reefs which surround the point, it is not surprising that this was the location of the first lighthouse along the southern Oregon coast. And despite what I already wrote about visiting lighthouses, it seemed like we should stop in since we were here.

This lighthouse is actually still functioning though I suspect that today the electronic equipment surrounding the lighthouse – all surrounded by fences and signs instructing visitors to stay away – are more important for navigation than the light issuing from the tower. Nevertheless, there is a 1000 watt bulb in the lens which shines day and night.

The docents here at this lighthouse were really knowledgeable and good. And they were so regretful that they could not let the dogs in the tower. But I don’t think they would have cared much for the stairs anyway.

A couple miles down the road from the lighthouse is the farmhouse of the Hughes family. Patrick Hughes, originally of County Tyrone in Ireland, was a pioneering dairyman and he established a ranch with over 100 cows on 2,000 acres along the Sixes River. He built this house in 1898. A Catholic in Protestant Oregon, he not only built the local parish church, Mary Star of the Sea, but also set aside one of the rooms in his house as a chapel.

The house is furnished in period antiques though not many have any necessary provenance to the house itself. Our guide decried the pink wall paper in this bedroom, but the sign at the door indicated that the occupant of the room was a son who never married….

There is no ranching taking place in the area right now, and the land has been allowed to slowly begin to revert back to a more natural appearance. We took the dogs on a hike. It was windy and cold! But Eli had his ball so he didn’t care.

We stopped on our way back at Port Orford Heads State Park. This is a smaller headland than Cape Blanco located right in Port Orford itself. The Coast Guard set up a rescue operation here in 1934 and it remained active until about 1980. The dormitories and other buildings from this era are still intact and form a museum. We were too late to do the tour of the museum, so we just looked at the boats.

Back at the house, John relaxed with some cheese and crackers and enjoyed the spectacular view. The dogs, exhausted from their afternoon romps, just slept.

I cooked dinner, and we ate with view of the sun setting into the ocean.

Evening brought to a close a near-perfect day on the Oregon coast.

After darkness fell, we watched a movie on the home theater system. I doubt I would ever invest in a 14 foot screen built into the living room ceiling, but it was fun anyhow.

China Mountain

It was warmer this morning than it was yesterday morning, but the fog had settled in thick overnight and it showed little sign of departing anytime soon. We were just as happy, then, that  we were leaving today and heading south. We cleaned up Doe Cottage – my parents always insisted that when you rented a place you needed to leave it as clean as you found it – and John did his usual exemplary job of packing the car. 

I knew it was going to be a long drive to Port Orford, but I gasped when Daniel displayed that trip at five and a half hours. Still, the Oregon coast is stunningly beautiful – at least when you are not in Lincoln City or Newport – so it was not a bad drive south. We stopped in the lovely town of Florence for lunch.

While Florence presents a good many options for eating – though none highly rated on UrbanSpoon or Yelp – there was only one which seemed to welcome canines. So we had an overpriced and uninspiring lunch on the dockside patio at the ICM C Food Restaurant. It wasn’t very good, but the dogs were given nice big bowls of water and there ample shade for them.

We continued on to Port Orford. John had willingly gone along with all my frugal trip planning, but he wanted one little splurge on this trip. And that splurge was renting the China Mountain House. Probably because it is in the middle of nowhere – Coos Bay is the nearest metropolis – renting this entire house was still far cheaper than a small room at the Santa Barbara Biltmore. And it is way more fun. The place is straight out of Architectural Digest.

The house sits on a bluff overlooking the ocean with panoramic views up and down the coast.

The dogs took little time to make the place their own.

Eli, decided that he looked his most dashing surrounded by contemporary art.

The stairs to the second floor were a little too much for Eli, and even Edie was initially skeptical of them. But she quickly adapted.

In the evening we walked down the hill and tool a stroll on the beach.

It was completely deserted, just the way dogs like it.

On the way back, a smiling woman with yoga mat in the back of her car waved at us. But just after that saw this sign. There was something about the surveillance camera on it and the vaguely fascist emblems on the poles on either side of the driveway (you can see just one in the picture below) that made it seem even creepier.

Tomorrow, we’ll explore the area a little more as well as enjoying our house.

Creamy!

It was clear but cold when we woke up. The thermometer read 45; for those of us from Southern California, that’s January! But it made little difference as we were not planning to hit the beach right away. No, as intrepid tourists how could we resist Tripadvisor’s number 1 attraction in the area, the Tillamook Cheese factory!

The Tillamook Creamery – its official name – is pretty cheesy (sorry, I couldn’t resist that). You look down on two rooms. In one, the milk is heated until the curds (solids) and whey (liquid) are separated. Artificial color is added to the curds, and  they pressed and heated until even more water comes out. Finally, the machines extrude 40 pounds blocks of yellow milk solids. A conveyor belt sends these blocks to another room where another group of workers seal them in plastic bags. The lighting was not great, and somehow the camera made the cheese look even more unnatural than it already was!

At this point, the cheese is sent over to a warehouse for aging. Generally the longer a cheese is aged, the better its flavor. But it is expensive to simply stockpile cheese under climate-controlled conditions, so after about 60 days most of the cheese is sent off to market.

The real attraction, the reason there are so many RV’s in that parking lot, is the cheese bar when you can get free samples of the different Tillamook products. They are arranged in order of aging. The first bowl has cheese curds, the slimy little pieces of unaged cheddar. Prior to this I had only had cheese curds on poutine, but they were no better separated from soggy French fries and pork gravy.

The tasting room led into the shop where all the flavors of Tillamook cheese are on sale. We bought a chunk of the three year cheddar which is really quite good. I cannot be quite so effusive about the 60 day cheddar. There is also a large ice cream stand where the different flavors of Tillamook ice cream can be sampled. John and I shared the five flavors for five dollars bowl. I liked Mudslide the best.

One the way back from the Tillamook Creamery we found the Tillamook Crematory. I am sure that my vegan friends would probably not see this as merely a difference of a few letters, but as emblematic of the evil of dairy consumption. John just figured that if he had been typing our morning destination into the GPS he might have ended up here instead.

We spend the afternoon doing the Three Capes Drive. We did much of this a few years ago on our first trip to Oregon with Edie. She showed no particular signs of remembering any of it, but as I have often noted dogs seem to have little appreciation for scenery. Here we are at the Cape Mears Lighthouse.

I have to admit that while I would certainly not be in favor of taking down any of these lighthouses, I do not quite understand the attraction they have for some people. There are folks who travel up and down the entire length of the continent visiting different lighthouses with the enthusiasm that birders have for sighting different species. To me, when you have seen one Fresnel lens you have seen all of them.

Not far from this was the Candelabra Tree. This was good, but I pondered how much more fun it could be if it had the full “Trees of Mystery" treatment.

We found an isolated beach not that far away, and Edie and Eli frolicked. Edie seemed intent on posing for photographs. Eli, of course, was obsessed with his ball.

We continued on to Pacific City. It is interesting how all of these towns on the Oregon Coast seem to attract a different group of tourists and each seems to have an appropriately different personality. You can drive your truck on the beach in Pacific City, and it’s not surprising that a brewpub dominates the town like the cathedral does in Durham. Just the signs “Burgers, Burritos, and Beer” tell you all you need to know about Pacific City.

There are sand dunes nearby when you can ride ATVs. One section of it, however, that thankfully set aside as a county park and wildlife area. A creek flowed into the ocean here, and the shallow water and vast expanse of sand were perfect for retrieving tennis balls.

It was late by the time we returned to Netarts. We had planned a longer evening stroll like we had had the night before, but it was very windy and quite cold. So we drove a couple miles to Oceanside and strolled there for a bit.

Despite what felt like arctic conditions to us, the sunset was lovely.

On the way back, we stopped where the boys had build their volcano the night before to see their efforts today. It was even bigger and better! I would definitely give them first prize in the Science Fair.