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!

Gold Beach

The steady rain encouraged us to stretch our budget and look for a cheap hotel on the Southern Oregon coast.  We neared the village of Gold Beach as evening approached, and it seemed a natural fit - we had visions of a quaint seaside town with fish restaurants and saltwater taffy shops, as the Rogue River tumbled through town to the ocean.

Gold Beach - hmm, I'm struggling with the Golden Rule here - to be fair it has nicely restored art-deco-ish concrete bridge (one of many on the Southern Oregon Coast).  And there is an OK driftwood-strewn beach, except that they've put the town's now-abandoned-looking local airfield directly between downtown and the beach.  There was nowhere that we wanted to eat at, shop for groceries at or stay overnight at.  We ended up at the cheapest motel we could find, which was pretty scrappy but did the trick, and we got out the next morning, the only damage being an overdose of late-night tortilla chips.  If only we had waited for Bandon, OR or other points north.

In fact, I think I can sum up everything you need to know about Gold Beach in just 4 photos.