Driving up the 101 – Part 2
After a surprisingly good night’s sleep in our sleeping bags, we rose and got breakfast going. I contend there is nothing more satisfying than holding a steaming cup of coffee in your hands on a chilly morning, its aroma and warmth swirling up out of the mug. After eating fried eggs and toast, we headed up the path a stone’s throw from our tent to check out the beach.
We strolled along the shore, watching the birds and admiring the various treasures washed up.
(Don’t you just love how the dark grey bird looks like it’s giving the evil eye?)
After our morning stroll, we headed back to camp and packed up. It’s worth mentioning that the campground was excellent. The sites were nicely spaced out and didn’t feel like they were right on top of each other. There were nice clean bathrooms with showers and the whole campground was tidy. We certainly will keep it in mind for future camping trips.
All packed up, we got back on the 101 and backtracked a little bit to see in the daylight a few places that were already in darkness when we passed them the night before:
Arch Rock
Natural Bridge
(That would be some people walking on the natural bridge who clearly could not read the sign that said the trail was CLOSED. They also couldn’t see all the brightly colored tape and fencing closing off the trailhead. Sigh.)
We resumed our journey north, making scenic stops every so often:
Cape Blanco
(Doesn’t this rock formation look like a sailboat?)
Face Rock / Bandon
See the face?? Pretty incredible!
(alas, that is not my handwriting… we accidentally stumbled across this previously written message).
We headed into old town Bandon for lunch and settled on Bandon Fish Market & Chowder House.
I got a Dungeness crab sandwich and was quite surprised. I was expecting the typical fried crabcake but this was a very fresh, very light-tasting sandwich with big tender chunks of crab.
We wrapped up our time in Bandon sampling the insane number of treats at Cranberry Sweets. I’m not kidding when I say they had a free sample of just about every kind of confection they produce. We were particularly fond of the candies made with beer from Deschutes Brewery – although the lemon tea cookies came in a close second!
We hit the road again and finally turned toward home at Florence … with one quick caffeine fix at Dutch Brothers. Our dogs were happy to see us and the best surprise of all was that they had actually behaved for our pet-sitter and not destroyed the house 🙂
It was a fun trip that gave us a taste of the southern coast of Oregon and lots of good ideas for what we’d like to explore further. We still have plenty of coastline left to travel … although next time, I will definitely reserve a campground. No more setting a tent up in the dark for me, thankyouverymuch.
And absolutely no more audiobooks from Sheila Connelly …. I don’t think I can handle any more gross jellybeans! 🙂
