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