We awoke today to very dreary rust-red skies. There are fires south of our camping spot and the smoke from those toasty get-togethers are turning our resort into a big gas chamber. The sun is not visible through the dreck during daylight hours.
In an effort to find some air suitable for respiration, we decided to go west, toward the ocean. About 20 miles later we got diverted and headed south to Powers, a town with no viable industry, a meager population and four residential lots we purchased there back in the Clinton administration. Recently we convinced the city to send their possibly sole worker, Jim, out to our lots to run a camera in the sewer to ascertain the presence of any sewer lateral connections to the city’s system. Jim felt that, in order to steer the camera and mark where the laterals may or may not be, he had to use a city mower to clear off a large portion of our holdings.
Busybody neighbors almost immediately complained when they saw Jim mowing our lots and he got in trouble with his superiors. Fortunately, Jim also found a municipal water system leak now visible in the mown grass that the city had been hunting for a considerable time. Jim went from being chewed out to being praised and congratulated for finding the mystery leak and I guess the management just ignored the mowing complaints from the busybodies.
While driving through Powers, we spotted a city truck and followed it to the wastewater plant. There I hailed the driver and found out it was indeed Jim. We had a long conversation about sewer and water for our property and have now developed a strategy to bring up the utilities so we can park our RV on our own property when visiting this area in the future. Hubba-hubba.
After our conference with Jim, we left Powers and returned down the twisting road along the south fork of the Coquille River to the main highway in Myrtle Penis. We were ready to continue our trek to breathable air on the coast. We turned west along the south shore of the Coquille until we emerged after about 20 miles of gorgeous scenery in Bandon.
In Bandon, we carefully turned away from town and headed north a few miles up 101 to Bullard’s Beach, a state park located at the mouth of the Coquille River at the Pacific. There we cruised through the park where we will head Tuesday, after the holiday. We also drove out to the river mouth and checked out the Coquille lighthouse, a venerable structure built on the north river jetty. There were gray whales fooling around very close to the beach.
The air did not reek of smoke in Bandon but high clouds of smoke gave us a bleary fuschia-colored sun. It was a gorgeous color but we would have preferred that the smoke just bugger off. We returned home along the north shore of the Coquille River. We determined that, when we leave Remote and head to Bullard’s Beach, we will go the long way around because the roads down both sides of the river are scary for cowardly RVers with an overall length of 50 feet.
We were delighted to find so much gorgeous scenery and so many wild animals along today’s route. We saw, in addition to the whales, a falcon, a big hawk, deer, a couple flocks of wild turkeys (our favorites), ducks, Canada geese and a tremendous variety of songbirds. It is gorgeous here. I just wish the smoke would get lost.
We took a few smoke-filled landscape photos and you can see the indistinct images of some of the sights if you click here