Yesterday, as we drove here from Florence, we crossed the 45^th parallel which means we are now north of the halfway line between the equator and the North Pole. Although the weather this year is still a bit chilly (nighttime temps in the low 40’s), we are approaching the summer solstice so it does not get dark here until about 10:00 PM. This morning I got up just after 4:00 AM to take care of a personal matter and it was already getting light. This part of the world would probably be a good spot to grow marijuana since there is plenty of sunshine when there is sunshine.

Regardless of the amount of light in the morning, we still got up around 0800 hrs and dawdled away the morning taking showers and having a nifty breakfast. Afterwards, we piled into the truck for some local exploration. Our first destination was BJ’s Quilting in nearby Cloverdale. Peggy popped in for a shopping visit because she likes this kind of store and came out still holding some of her money. I admire her restraint when shopping in stores where they only sell stuff she would happily acquire in dumpster loads if she was not careful.

We also passed through a town which we suspect was called Beaver because they had a shop called Dave’s Beaver Maintenance and another called Beaver Firearms and Grocery. We did not see any beavers there.

We continued north on US-101 to Tillamook. There is an enormous blimp hanger, now an air museum, along the highway south of town. There used to be two hangers but one was re-purposed into a gigantic processing plant where they make compost with the abundant cow poop available in dairy country. Back in the early 1980’s, Tillamook cheese was made here in a small facility where they had a small parking lot for the few visitors who ventured to this remote part of Oregon. When I visited back then, there were two or three others in the small store with me, sampling and purchasing the great cheese. Things have changed. Now the Tillamook cheese factory is enormous with many impressive stainless steel vats, loading docks, huge warehouses and a new, modern facility for the thousands of visitors awaiting their chance to see what happens when milk is mixed with rennet. The parking lot is about the size of Disneyland’s. There were hundreds of people outside, either departing with their loot or waiting in a long line to get in to acquire some. We snapped a few pictures but declined to get in a long line to buy cheese readily available in supermarkets. We did stop not far down the road at a place called Debby D’s Sausage where we picked up some summer sausage and jerky before turning west to head out to Cape Mears.

Cape Mears is the northernmost of three capes along this section of coast. Accordingly, the coast road is called the Three Capes Scenic Route which passes Cape Mears, Cape Lookout and Cape Kiwanda. It used to be a loop but the road inconveniently slid into the sea above Cape Mears and the state has apparently decided to leave it unrepaired. The road is quite serpentine and wanders up and down steep hills. I know why they call the middle section Cape LOOKOUT! The coastline and offshore rocks are stunningly beautiful and home to lots of sea critters, We spotted many types of sea birds that have established nests on the abrupt, vertical basalt cliffs at the edge of the Pacific. There are also lots of sea lions who have hauled their chubby bodies out of the water on long sand spits and set up colonies that look like a bunch of logs or fat joints, pointy on both ends.

We eventually found our way back to our RV spot near Cape Kiwanda where we rewarded ourselves with cocktails. It was a very nice drive today.

Click the link to see pix. https://photos.app.goo.gl/P5jJQb1P8H4y8Ndt7

This morning, we gathered up our chairs, antennas and bird feeders and loaded them into the trailer for travel. Since Thousand Trails South Jetty has almost no sewer hookups for it’s guests, we got to pull into another unoccupied campsite to dump our tanks because their regular dump station is allegedly being upgraded. It looked like the upgrade, currently, is some faded yellow construction caution tape gaily strung between the former water piping in the contemplated dump station demolition. No evidence of work or progress on this facility was evident during our stay at this sewer-piping challenged campground.

We turned north on US-101 and took a gorgeous drive up the coast through Florence, Yachats, Newport and Lincoln City before turning off for a short drive to Pacific City. Here, we found another Thousand Trails facility with many campsites but few with sewer, 50 amp electrical or decent roads. We took a trying drive through the park, including one turnaround with barely sufficient space and much steering wheel wrenching before settling on space F5 which we were able to slither backwards into with only a moderate amount of cursing. There is naturally no sewer in this site. The satellite antenna works very well but there is no data service, WiFi or phone. The last time we visited this campground, in 2014, I clumsily rubbed the rear right corner of our trailer against one of their dump station bollards protecting some gravel and making exit difficult. This left a small yellow badge of incompetance on the rear skirt that took a long time to rub out. I hope to avoid a repeat performance when we leave this year.

This morning we engaged in our usual, rather sluggish start before jumping into the truck for a short drive to Darlingtonia Wayside located about 5 miles north of Florence. Despite what it sounds like, Darlingtonia is not a NASCAR track or a city in West Virginia. Darlingtonia is scientific-speak for a pitcher plant, also called a cobra lily. It is a strange looking plant that grows in boggy areas but it has a weakness – it needs certain nutrients that can’t be obtained from the bog so it has evolved a unique strategy. It captures, kills, dissolves and absorbs bugs through clever characteristics involving smell, vision and stupidity on the part of the bugs.

Not being bug fans, Peggy and I can truly appreciate any form of life that devours bugs so they can’t devour us. We noted that, as we strolled the short trail from parking to viewing, there were plentiful flying, squirming and crawling insects. However, once we got on the wood walkway and viewing deck surrounded by the Darlingtonia, there were no bugs. I grin every time I think about the nasty creatures that formerly occupied the airspace and ground around these plants. I hope they died slowly.

After finishing up there, we took a spin around nearby Mercer Lake where some fortunate Oregonians have nice houses overlooking the cedar-lined pond. I drove Peggy to a quilting store and sent her inside but she took mercy on me and was only in there for about 5 minutes. We also went to a place called B.J.’s 48 Flavors Ice Cream where some strange things happened. Peg ordered some of their homemade Jamocha Almond Fudge and was quickly served with a small cup of some stuff she described as “Lysol flavored” and with one almond that could not be cracked by expensive dental work or a claw hammer. I tried to get some regular old chocolate ice cream but the girl behind the counter told me that today, as it turned out, they only had 47 flavors. We were not overwhelmed with our success.

We fueled the truck on our way back to South Jetty and our traveling home because tomorrow we will sod off and continue our northward trek.

See the weird plants. Click the link. https://photos.app.goo.gl/QgHQjXZGygKtRA4H7

Today we did the laundry.

It was pretty boring.

It is also our daughter’s birthday. Happy B’day! Dana called us while we were trudging through the wash cycles and we had a nifty conversation. We could be there to celebrate with her but we are here, instead. This retirement stuff is quite nice.

Today was moving day again. We left what I consider to be the nicest park we have stayed at in our travels in Remote. We pulled out of the park onto OR-42 which we followed northwest for 42 miles through Myrtle Penis and Coquille before merging onto US-101 about five miles south of Coos Bay. We continued through Coos Bay, North Bend, twenty miles of beautiful highway, Reedsport, another twenty miles of beautiful highway and pulled off the road into South Jetty TT in Florence.

South Jetty seems to be an older park and management is currently involved with allegedly fixing issues of past poor maintenance. They seem to be approaching the problems in a mysterious fashion because the roads are still lousy, most RV spaces do not have sewer hookups, numerous sites are closed and unoccupied, the WiFi is only available at the Activity Center, the regular dump station is closed for renovations where no renovations are in progress but the old business office has been coverted into a nice sales office. Their laundry, however, is superb with plenty of washers and dryers.

We got a spot with a gap in the trees south of our RV such that we can use our TV satellite dish which needs a clear shot towards south. I doubt there are more than five percent of our fellow campers that have a signal. We made up a big pot of beef stew for dinner. It was great because it is a lot cooler here than down where we stayed in California and stew seemed to warm us right up.

On our last full day here in Coos County, we took a drive up the south fork of the Coquille River to the town of Powers. Back in the foggy and distant past, Peggy and I thought about possibly living in Powers when we got real old. We bought four residential lots with a former house that bordered the river. We gave the funky house to the local fire department for a practice burn and, at that time, the parcel had three water and sewer hookups, all allegedly properly capped by the fire department when cleaning up the ashy remains of our former house.

Skip ahead about 20 years and we decided to get sewer and water service going on the parcel again so we could park our RV on our property for a few weeks a year. When we contacted the the local authorities about the sewer, they said we had no sewer connections. The same story was given to us for the water. A protracted feud/negotiation/coddling series of sometimes heated discussions ensued. When we finally got the city to respond to our inquiries about the sewer, they ran a camera up the sewer line and found that, indeed, we did have sewer connections. In order to find the exact location of the sewer stub, an employee took a city mower to a part of our parcel and, hidden in the dense undergrowth, found not only the water but a water system leak they had been hunting for two years. At this time, the city’s arguments and positions about our utility hookups became untenable.

In the last two years, we have been having lengthy and often fruitless phone conversations with the Powers municipal entities in attempts to get sewer and water installed but a few months ago we received a call from the new city utility kingpin that both sewer and water stubs have been installed. We went to Powers today to see if they were lying.

To get to Powers, we drove north on OR-42 for about 15 miles until we got to Myrtle Penis where we turned back south along the east bank of the south fork of the Coquille for 18 miles on a road called 542. It is a twisty route since it follows a river through a steep mountain range. We ambled along at about 30 miles an hour because the road is not the best quality but it certainly keeps the tourists at bay. It is fortunate we were moseying along at 30 because the scenery is fantastic.

We finally made it to Powers and it turns out that the utilities have indeed been installed. Unfortunately, we heard not long ago that at least one city pundit believed that temporarily setting up and inhabiting our own fifth wheel trailer on our own property might be in violation of a city ordinance but, if we move in, we intend to defy that particular bit of the law. Not far away, many trailers and mobile homes (or wobble boxes) are distributed liberally across the landscape beyond the views from the property.

After checking out our future former retirement residence, we continued up 542 for about another 20 miles of just stunning scenery to a U.S. Forest Service campground at a place called Daphne Grove where we stopped and settled in for a picnic lunch alongside the river. We returned home after lunch by the same route, admiring the abundant river views, waterfalls, steep mountains and lush forest of this gorgeous part of the world. It is a very nice drive but not for those in a hurry. We didn’t travel very far today but it took us about 6 hours to do it.

See photos. Click away, https://photos.app.goo.gl/6XD1T1i6PzWRn82x9

Peggy inherited some property in the city of Coquille a few years ago but we really had no idea of what it looked like and we were only vaguely aware of its location. Coquille is the county seat of Coos County and that is no idle descriptor. Today we went and found the acreage although it is hard to see due to the vigorous growth of vegetation which is amply provided with rainfall about 9 months out of 12 every year. Coos County gets around 40 inches of rain a year. After consulting some neighbors, we found the parcel and Peggy decided to wander onto the property to take a look around. That turned out to be an impossible task at her age because she is no longer young enough to wield chain saws or automatic machetes and the brush is impenetrable without them. We did scope out the boundaries of the property on two sides but were foiled on the other two.

After this partial success, we decided to take a spin along the Coquille River going downstream on the north bank. Once we made it to the ocean, we turned around and went upstream on the south bank. The roads are a bit funky but the scenery is magnificent. We spotted a raccoon, a skunk, some deer, a pair of turkeys, about 600 dairy cattle and lots of Stellar’s blue jays along the drive.

We intended to find a malt shop on our return trip but were unsuccessful. Undaunted, we stopped by a local supermarket in Myrtle Point (which, strangely, is called Myrtle Penis by non-Penisers) where we picked up some very tasty Umpqua brand ice cream and hauled it back to the trailer. This locally-produced substance took a heavy hit once we got it back home. I don’t know about Peggy but I had what my doctor might characterize as a fatal dose. It didn’t kill me, yet.

There’s a couple pix. Click the link. https://photos.app.goo.gl/b9BmE5PXDQf7Br619

Today we took a spin about 40 miles northwest to Coos Bay so we could visit my sister-in-law who lives in a nifty house that looks like a pretty little barn and has a fabulous view of the bay. I was delighted to not only see Katie but also to see her great animals, Robin the dog and Zeus the cat. The three of them are some of my favorite associates.

We hobnobbed for a couple hours with Katie, maintaining a keen eye on her pets who engage in delightful antics when we are not petting them. Robin is a Lab and Zeus is a Maine Coon who weighs only 18 pounds. They are both gorgeous and remarkably well-behaved although Robin, in a fit of fun, broke Katie’s leg a couple years ago and she still limps a bit.

We soon became ravenous so we all piled into the pickup and headed down to 7 Devils Brewery for lunch and some nice porter. They serve pretty good albacore and fries although it came with arugula salad which I think tastes like bitter paint. They also serve the Canadian heart-plug, poutine, which I ordered for the table. Poutine is French fries covered with garlic cheese curds and gravy. It may sound bad but tastes good and there wasn’t a speck left on the plate when we left.

After finishing our conversations and pet wrestling, Peggy and I departed but only traveled about 10 miles south before pulling off and parking outside the Coos Bay Speedway, a 3/8 mile dirt track. Tonight the events were stock car races with many classes being represented. There were tiny old Japanese and American coupes with four cylinder engines that sound like pissed off kazoos when running at full tilt. There were late model sportsmen and modified classes with large V-8 engines that make a terrific noise and crash regularly. One of them flipped over at least twice before coming to rest on its top. The driver came out with a big grin and no injuries. Track management was giving away bicycles to kids this evening so there were hundreds of munchkins seemingly going in all directions in the spectator areas. They had a jet dragster that blew a lot of smoke, deafened many with afterburner use and then screamed down the adjacent drag strip while all the spectators watched with their fingers in their ears.

At about 10:00 PM, they ran the last V-8 race before wheeling the dragster out to the center of the track where an old car was chained to the noisy, hot end of the dragster before being incinerated by the jet exhaust. A fine night. We headed back to the Remote Outpost after all this fun.

We hustled out of Ashland this morning, heading north again. It was only a short drive to northbound I-5 which we followed up through Grant’s Pass before starting a long, slow descent to a turnoff near Winston, Oregon. There, we fiddled around on some back roads before turning west on OR-42 for the run through the Coast Range. About 40 miles later, we turned into the Remote Outpost RV Park in Remote.

This is our third visit to Remote Outpost in the last three years. We keep coming back because this park is the most attractive facility we have visited in almost five years of continuous full-time RVing. The park only has about 25 spaces and a few cabins. However, the owners, Rob & Idi, have worked on the place such that it is like camping in somebody’s really spectacular back yard. All the spaces have full hookups with 50 amp electrical service. The roads are superb. We took advantage of their satellite TV hookup which gave us about 200 channels, including HBO. The grounds are meticulously landscaped with ample shade trees and large lawn areas. There is a lounge where one can play pool, read or watch the Big Game while cooking up a feast in the available kitchen. There is an attractive outdoor pavilion with full cooking capabilities for those nice days. There is an on-site laundry. The middle fork of the Coquille River runs along the edge of the campground. There is a nice stair from the camping area down to the private beach along the river’s edge. There is no place else that we have stayed that even comes close to the glorious surroundings here.

It took us three hours to get here from Ashland, about two-thirds on the interstate and the rest on serpentine OR-42. 42 used to be a terrifying road some 45 years ago when I drove it the first time but there have been many improvements since. It is now a bit wider and some of the really frightening corners have been eliminated but it is still a road to drive slowly. It isn’t just the beautiful scenery – minor lapses in vigilance can result in all of your assets being turned into junk parts in the river far below the road.

We didn’t get much accomplished today. We took a spin over to Medford to find a Trader Joe’s once we started moving around the trailer. Medford has made a myriad of alleged improvements to their access roads near the freeway. Among the improvements are: total inability for GPS systems to find their location on the new improvements, stores that can be seen but remain inaccessible to motorists traveling over the improvements and entire sections of road where the traffic flows on the wrong sides of the road despite not reversing the steering to the left side. Streets that lead away from the freeway are not the same streets one uses to return to the freeway. I believe it required more time to find the Trader Joe’s and return to the adjacent freeway than it did to perform the shopping portion of the task. The freeway runs almost adjacent to the store but you can’t get there from here.

We did some cleanup and dumped the waste tanks so we won’t have to do these tasks tomorrow morning. We will depart tomorrow for points north.