Coos Bay, Oregon to Eureka, California

After Florence we drove down to Coos Bay, OR (Nov. 3) and stayed at The Mill Casino RV Park.  By making an online reservation the night before it only cost us $15.  It was a beautiful park all paved and looked over a bay.  They even had a dog run that was very nice.  We stayed here two nights as we needed to do laundry and a little grocery shopping. I found a small food co-op in North Bend (the next little town south) and bought some spices, incense and tempeh.

We have been using Oregon Coast Mile-by-Mile magazine as our guide for things to do in each coastal town. It has proven to be very helpful and informative.  One of ads in the magazine was for $20 free play at Elk Valley Casino in Crescent City, CA. So we stopped there on our way down Hwy 101.  We made out pretty good.  I walked away with $43 and Jim got $9, so I paid for lunch!

We continued down the road and saw Trees of Mystery coming up so we stopped.  This would give Jim a taste of the redwoods which I wanted to see on this trip.  Senior prices were $11 for a nine minute trip up and back on their Sky Trail gondola over the tops of the redwoods.  We chose to take the shuttle up to the gondola as it was a steep climb and we still had to drive to Eureka.  Here are some photos…

Entrance with huge statues.	That’s Jim in the foreground. This gives you an idea of of how big these are.
	The Sky Trail gondola
Tree house look from the top	Interesting facts
Quite a view at the top	See the ocean in background?
Cathedral tree where many weddings are held	Look closely these are trees growing out of a downed redwood tree
Huge redwood tree	This will give you a prospective of how huge it is.

Along the way we saw magnificent redwood trees and short glimpses of the ocean…great contrasts for the eye.

	See the ocean?
The car gives you an idea how large the trees are
This is a tree house-see the door in the bottom?	The house behind shows you how large the tree really is

We did drive through part of the National Redwood Park so Jim did get a good look of the redwoods even though it was just a drive through. I was happy he was able to do this.

We arrived at Eureka, California Elks Club (Nov. 4) for the night.  At $15 it was a bargain.  Back on the road the next morning and settled in Ukiah, CA Elks Club (Nov. 5).  I had to put in this last photo where we stopped for fuel (paid $4.30/gal for diesel).  Notice the rusty fuel pump….we have got to wash the rig and get the salt spray off the rig before we start to show rust.

Well, I think that brings us up to date finally.  Tomorrow I’ll blog about our visit to the Sacramento, CA area.

Remember, you are loved.

Florence-Heceta, Oregon

October 29th we moved from Coyote-Rock RV Park in Lincoln City to the Elks Club in Florence. I had ordered my meds for delivery at the Elks Club, but my dear old CVS-Caremark Rx company couldn’t add in another mailing address because of their software. It took an extra two days to fix that problem, so we ended up staying four days instead of two.  But there is a lot to do in the Florence area so it wasn’t a hardship.

We ventured out to see Cape Heceta lighthouse which is very picturesque.

Even going towards the lighthouse offered many photo ops.  There was a steep climb to get to the lighthouse, and with my hips, I decided to stay lower down and let Jim and The Mossman’s go on up.

Parking lot view of the bridge we crossed	Walking up towards the lighthouse.
Bride from further away	Far off view of the lighthouse

Here is one of the photos I took of the lighthouse through the trees from down below that I thought came out well.

Jim took these photos from the lighthouse.

Next, we drove to see the sea lions.  We first stopped at the Sea Lions Caves, but they wanted $10 each to go down in an elevator to the caves. Additionally, the attendant said all the sea lions were outside on the rocks sunning themselves.  So what would we be paying $10 to see??????  We drove down the road a bit to a turnout in the road, looked over the side and look what we saw…

We spent a fair amount of time just watching the antics of the sea lions hopping into the ocean and jumping out.  They sure are loud with all their grunts and cries. The little ones are comical to watch attempting to get onto the rocks.

Next stop, Eureka, California!  Remember, you are loved.