A Tale of Ten Falls

Silver Falls State Park campground might have been full, but after a night of excitement in Stayton we headed back to the park to check out its star attraction, the Trail of Ten Falls.  Fourteen kilometres, ten waterfalls, and three hours later we have more waterfall pictures than we know what to do with.  I'll spare you most of them, but of course you want to see all ten falls, right?

1. South Falls - 177 feet.

The star of the show, really.  The rock behind the falls has been carved out over the years, with a little assistance from the builders of the state park to create a trail so that visitors can have a 360 degree view.

2. Lower South Falls - 93 feet.

3. Lower North Falls - 30 feet.

4. Double Falls - 178 feet.

5. Drake Falls - 27 feet. 

7. Winter Falls - 134 feet.

Many of these signs along the trail.  No diving off cliffs?  No throwing boulders off cliffs?

7. Twin Falls - 31 feet.

8. North Falls - 136 feet.

9. Upper North Falls - 65 feet.

10. Winter Falls - 134 feet.

As exhausted by hiking to waterfalls as you are of looking at photos of them, we drove back to Salem through some stunning countryside.

And finished the day, as we occasionally do, with a beer - this one was from Boon's Treasury, one of Salem's two McMenamin's establishments.

And finally (desperate to avoid the "suite hotel" at which we were staying) we went to see a movie at a theatre that doubled as a full service restaurant - Chad advises that Deschutes' Black Butte Porter is a great pair to the new Batman movie.

Random Stop in Stayton

Heading inland from the coast, we planned to stop in Independence, Oregon at the Rogue Brewing hop farm and then head for Silver Falls State Park (sure, it was a July Friday, but as the biggest state park in Oregon surely there would be vacancies there, right?).  We ended up at a Rodeway Inn in Stayton - a random little town about 15 miles east of Salem.  This is how we let that happen.

Even at their super cool rural farm, where Rogue is producing its own hops, barley, hazelnuts, and honey, they managed to let us down again.  No one in Newport had bothered to tell us that their tasting room in Independence - which is really in the middle of nowhere - doesn't open until 4 pm on Fridays.  That wasn't super helpful when we showed up at 1:30 in the afternoon.  We wandered around a bit, but didn't find anyone who would give us the time of day.

The "guard" dog and I check each other out.

Hops are awesome.  The McFrothys love hops!

Not all of the McFrothys love hazelnuts, though.

After our let down at Rogue, we drove through Salem to Silver Falls State Park to find that it was full, all 200+ sites of it.  As were the next two campgrounds we were tried.  The fourth was signed but didn't appear to exist.  So we ended up east of Salem in Stayton, a town that's only redeeming features are its cheap accommodation and a Mexican restaurant.

Recommendation: if you're travelling in Oregon on a late July weekend and want to camp, make a reservation.  If you get stuck, the Rodeway in Stayton isn't the worst place to stay, and has huge rooms so you can dry out your soggy camping gear from the night before :)

Newport and Rogue

Next stop was just North on the Oregon Coast, to Newport.  Home of a Coast Guard station, a NOAA research station, a sizable fishing fleet, and a bit marina and RV park adjacent to Rogue Ales, one of America's oldest and best known craft brewers.

Another classic concrete-and-steel bridge from the early 20th century

The "old town" in Newport is 1/2 working fishery piers, 1/2 rustic tourist shops

Mo's is an institution in Newport - it's also where Rogue Ales  rented their original brewery space. Apparently Mo gave them a deal, on the condition that they display a picture of her (an elderly lady) in a bathtub at each of their pubs. 

Is this a sister city to Victoria, BC?  An Undersea Gardens (the same design) right across the street from a wax museum?  Weird.

Grabbed a beer at the Rogue pub in the old town.  The space is a bit too "tourist family restaurant," though my special bitter was excellent.  That is, until I discovered that 12oz was $4.75 in one of the lowest-alcohol-tax states.  Really?  That's more expensive than BC, the highest-alcohol-tax jurisdiction in North America.

We heard that the Rogue brewery was just across the bay, and had tours of both the brewery and adjacent distillery.  Having no other plans, we hopped over.  I'll provide a bit more detail in a hoplog blog post later (I'm waaaaay behind in my beer posts at this point...).

Sampling about 1/8 oz of whiskey for $1

Nice view from the tiny distillery building

The still where Rogue produces gin, rum and whiskey. 

Some Rogue barrels (spirits) and fermenters (beer)

The manually-fed bottling line.  Notice the pink bottles of Rogue Voodoo Doughnuts Bacon Maple beer going through

So Rogue was moderately interesting, but their tours and staff vibe were a little, I don't know, aloof?  Maybe it's the strong-headed fishing community roots, but we felt much more welcome and at home at most of the breweries in Bend (and Portland, and elsewhere) than we did at Rogue.  But we'll check out their farm up near Salem & see if it's just a coastal thing.

We managed to score one of the last available camping spots at a massive State Park just 2 miles South of Newport - it was a Thursday, and it was already 100% booked for the weekend.  This was more like the American parks I was used to on the East coast and in California - hundreds of campers elbow to elbow in extremely high density.  Fortunately, we got probably the most private site in the whole campground - a bit mosquito-y, but otherwise excellent.

Took a walk after our campsite dinner through several hundred metres of dunes to the beach and  South Jetty.

It got a little rainy in the evening, so I rigged up our way-too-small tarp as best I could and started a fire from leftover firewood, then made hot chocolate and planned our next day of travel.  (Note: for a couple of days in a row now, I've managed to scrounge leftover, partially-burned firewood from our own fire ring or from an adjacent empty campsite.  Each time it was enough to burn for several hours, and to avoid paying the high local cost for tiny bundles of firewood.  That might sound cheap, but it's also efficient - I'm making use of leftovers.)

Weekend campsite availability on the middle or North Oregon Coast looks terrible - we decided to try our luck inland the next day.

Lighthouses and Beach Towns and Dunes, Oh My!

Leaving Gold Beach behind, we headed up the coast with hopes of a little more excitement than abandoned airports and microwaveable pork rinds.  Our first stop did not disappoint - the Cape Blanco lighthouse.  Although it's still a working lighthouse, you can actually get up close and take a tour.  It's the oldest lighthouse on the Oregon Coast, and sits on the second-most westerly point of land in the lower 48 US states (though some locals claim it's the farthest west, that distinction actually goes to some point on the Olympic peninsula in Washington).  Some friendly volunteers from as far afield as Alabama told us about the lighthouse and took us up to the top for a view of the fresnel lens.

Historically, this tank was filled with hog fat as fuel for the light.  It's fair to say that Chad was much more excited by this fact than I was!

We visited Cape Blanco on one of the calmest days of the year -  it's usually incredibly windy out there.

Our next stop was Bandon, a bit further up the coast.  Bandon's much more a cute little coastal town than Gold Beach was.

Bandon was also a lot more worried about whether we were having a good time than Gold Beach was.

I'm making friends with this seal, although Chad thinks it looks like I'm being strangled.

Chad notes once again that we're back in an IALA-B navigational region.  The Americans really like their channel-marking buoys and their visual ranges, especially on rivers navigable from the Pacific.

Our overnight stop for the day was the state park just south of Florence.  This is just about at the North end of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, and our campsite was a stone's throw from the dunes.  The last time I saw this much sand, I was in the Sahara Desert!

Forest...

... Dunes!

Mini dunes hoodoos

Tracks from some of the many, many buggies and motorcycles racing up and down the dunes.

This sign has obviously been here a while, and will be buried soon.  They have lines of signs marking the limits of the dunes, but the sands slowly bury many of these over time and they have to be replaced.

Dune jumping!

We finished the day with a camp dinner, followed by a drive into Florence to catch the stunning sunset at another beach on the North Jetty.  A very coastal day!