It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. The week before we were supposed to leave on a long-planned driving trip to San Francisco, I threw my back out really bad. However, we still wanted to try to salvage the remains of our vacation once I was well enough. The problem wasn’t the driving – it was sleeping in a bed. Until I could do that, instead of sleeping in my comfortable recliner at home, we couldn’t travel. Finally, on the 23rd I reached that milestone, and we made plans to flee town. I wouldn’t say I was comfortable sleeping on a flat bed, but it was manageable, so we decided to go as far as we could in the time we had. Then I got sick.
After establishing that I didn’t have Covid and I didn’t have a fever, we decided to proceed with our plans. We left on Christmas Day, and spent the first night in Seaside, Oregon in a hotel right by the beach. On the way, we tried to stop by Fort Stevens State Park to the Peter Iredale shipwreck. We indeed found it, but the wind was blowing so hard it was trying to sandblast our faces, so we quickly retreated to the car. A big storm came that night, and the whistling of the wind past the building, along with my back issues and my cold, made it hard to sleep. The building noticeably shook, hard enough to make the toilet water slosh around a little. We only made it as far as Newport the next day, after stopping briefly in Cannon Beach (where we saw an elk walking down the road!), and at the Tillamook cheese factory.
Each night we drove until sunset, went to bed quite early, ate breakfast in the hotel, and ate leftovers from the previous night’s dinner for lunch. Each night my back discomfort and coughing would wake me up after each sleep cycle, giving me very fragmented sleep at best. In the morning I’d drag myself out of bed with a stiff back and a headache. However, once I had a hot shower, hot meal, hot coffee, and some Tylenol, I was good to go for the day’s drive. By 10 a.m. I’d feel almost normal. I enjoyed the daylight hours and started to dread the night.
Just north of Newport, we stopped at the Yaquina Head lighthouse. They have a great visitor center there, but when we tried to walk to the actual lighthouse, we got pelted with hail and ran back to the car. Although there’s a nice aquarium in Newport, the best thing to do there is free. It’s the City’s sea lion dock, which is hidden away behind some businesses, and alongside commercial fishing boats. I knew where it was from my last visit there two years ago, and went looking for it. If you’ve ever heard the distinctive arfing of sea lions, you won’t forget it. Probably a hundred of them huddle up on this dock during the colder months of the year. There’s always more trying to climb on, while some of the bigger males scream at them to stay away from his harem. It’s a boisterous and entertaining scene, and the closest you’ll ever get to a wild sea lion community (little more than ten feet!). To me, that makes it better than any aquarium.
Our other favorite stop with the same theme was the Sea Lion Caves, between Newport and Florence. It’s a huge cave underneath a cliff, where scores of sea lions like to gather on the rocks. Decades ago, somebody built an elevator which goes more than 200 feet down to it from a store by the highway. Within the cave there’s a small museum and vantage point for viewing the sea lions, along with the huge waves which perpetually crash in and out of the cave. I’ve never seen anything so unique.
We stopped by the Umpqua River Lighthouse. There was a volunteer whale watcher there, an elderly woman with binoculars who was quite trained in spotting whales. This is gray whale migration season. She said that on average, there were more than 30 whales per hour moving north along the coast! Because of that day’s high surf conditions, though, the whales were swimming far from shore, and she had only spotted two the whole day. For many miles near the southern Oregon coast, there are huge lakes of sand dunes. We stopped at a few places where we could get a look at them. I also enjoyed seeing all the old historic downtowns, what I call “authentic American cities”. That included Tillamook, Newport, North Bend, and Coos Bay among others. South of Port Orford the highway hugs the sea, and has some of the best scenery on the whole coast. We pulled over and stood in awe of the angry ocean crashing against ancient sea stacks. It made the discomfort of the trip all worthwhile, way better than sitting at home. Although traveling in winter has its challenges, it also gives you a different experience which is beautiful in its own way, and largely devoid of tourists.
On that third day we crossed into California around 4:00, and spent the night in Crescent City. More about that next time.
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