Day 2 Pacific Coast

Sunsets over the ocean can be lovely. Here’s one at Nehalem Bay State Park on Oregon’s Pacific Coast.

This park has more people camping in it than I expected at this time of year so we dumped and filled before we left just in case we can’t get hookups further south on the coast.

We planned to stop early at Cape Lookout but there’s no ocean view there and it’s getting ready to rain again so we decided to go on to Beachside State Park where we should have a good view of the ocean.

Part of the road was away from the beach but we drove between a couple of sand dunes anyway. Dave commented on it being “beach away from the shore.”

We saw what looked like giant marshmallows. I’m sure they are some type of grain that was wrapped when it was harvested but the marshmallow look reminded me of the year my Christmas package from Mom included a little bag of marshmallows with a note that said, “You’ve been bad so here’s the scoop. All you’re getting is snowman poop.” She worried I would take it wrong but I thought it was hilarious.

Apparently fishing is a big day after Thanksgiving Day activity here. There are lots of boats out on every type of water. Most of them seem to have 3-5 people in them. Many have whole families.  

We stopped at a view area for a rest stop and photo op. See the house way down there? I wonder how often they get flooded? I wonder if they think it’s worth that to have that view?

A pickup passed us carrying more fishing poles than it had people. If you fish with more than one pole, what do you do if both get strikes at the same time?

The sun finally broke through! Happy, happy, happy.

Then we came to Cape Foulweather which lived up to its name.

In Newport we stopped at WalMart to pick up Dave’s prescription and a few supplies. This one didn’t have a grocery store so we didn’t get everything on our list.

We finally reached Beachside State Park only to see a sign saying they are closed for the winter! Man! We drove all this way to park on the beach! What to do; what to do?

Fortunately, Tillium Beach Campground in the Suislaw National Forest was not too much further down the road and we managed to find a campsite where we could see the beach from our driver/passenger seats. I stayed in my seat until it got dark enough I could no longer see the ocean.

We have no hookups here (they were all taken by people who got here earlier than we did) so we need to conserve power but I’m frustrated with Dave’s responses to that need. I asked him to play cards but he said no. So, I asked him to plug in my computer to the 12 volt system but he told me to run off the computer’s battery. I couldn’t get a decent wifi signal so I asked him to plug in the booster but, again, he said no. So I played a computer game until my battery got down to 3% where it threatened to loose its memory if I didn’t plug it in NOW.

In the meantime, Dave powered up his computer (using his battery, I admit) but he plugged in the booster so he could get a better signal. So I made him plug in my computer until the battery got up to 11% then he complained I had used up half the night’s electricity. So I gave up and went to bed at 9 p.m.

The next morning I checked the battery and the gauge says it’s full and the meter says 12.4 volts. Dave says we shouldn’t let it go below 12.2 volts or we risk damaging the batteries so we used about 2/3 of what we could have. It turns out his concern was that we would run out of power during the night so the furnace fan wouldn’t work and it would get VERY cold in here. I finally understood his worry. Then he spoiled it by saying we plan to replace these batteries in a couple of days anyway, so maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if they dropped below 12.2. Men!

TTYL,

Linda