Exploration by vehicle was our chosen activity for today and we hopped right into it. We started by driving from our current spot at Remote Outpost RV Park and heading west on OR-42 all the way to no-real-downtown Remote. From there we turned north into the forests of eastern Coos County and the Rogue-Siskiyou National Forest by driving up Sandy Creek Road. Our gazetteer map was not entirely accurate and by some quirk, probably crummy navigation, we turned the wrong way and the road got thinner, then turned to gravel and got skinnier yet before being blocked by a steel cable stretched across the road. There was a sign dangling from the cable that said in confusing language that some type of activity was occurring on the other side of the cable where tourists and idiots are unwelcome, like logging, marijuana cultivation or Neo-Nazi battle training. We turned around and backtracked a few miles until we found some paving and, miraculously, the route continuing up Sandy Creek.
After turning on the second option road, pavement markings soon disappeared and the road got very steep. It was a long, steep (maybe 5 miles of grades exceeding 10%) climb but we ultimately made it to the ridge separating Sandy Creek from the East Fork of the Coquille River. They had recently logged near the ridge so we could see a series of ridges between us and the Pacific which is a long way off. There were too many ridges to count.
Leaving the ridge, we dove down another steep road with switchbacks as we descended into the East Fork watershed. After a lot of road, none of it straight or level, we crossed the East Fork at a bridge from the 1930s and took a right toward a town shown on the map as Sitkum. Sitcum is a lot like Remote in that it really does not exist, per se, as a town but is actually a very small collection of houses in a series of gorgeous meadows flanked by massive rock walls. If I was in the cattle business, I would want to do it there.
We were sort of running low on time so we headed down the East Fork to Dora, another town but this one has a fire station and a nice library in addition to a few houses. It is also very pretty. From Dora we turned northwest across a series of low ridges until dropping down into the valley of the North Fork of the Coquille River where we went up to La Verne Park, the place my beloved wife and I started paying attention to each other about a million years ago. It is still gorgeous there. There are small waterfalls right in the campground and adjacent to the day use areas.
The sun was setting so we drove down the North Fork to the county seat, Coquille, where we turned back south to our spot in Remote. We stopped at a Kozy Kitchen in Myrtle Penis. We have eaten breakfast many times in other Kozy Kitchens in North Bend and Coos Bay and morning meals have been good. They were not so good in Myrtle Point. I give their Myrtle Point outlet a D for our dinner; soggy veggies, shaky main course and fair potatoes. A short fuel stop and then we were home.
There’s pix. Click here