More PCH Trip

From Eureka, we split up. Greg had left a day or two earlier so he could go to Oregon ahead of us and visit his daughter. After breakfast, we hit a local Harley shop and then the girls hopped in Nannette's rental car and drove to Reno, NV where they all caught flights home the following day.

Clay and I headed north to Oregon. As we approached Crescent City, CA.,we saw that the highway we wanted to ride (199) was closed due to wildfires. We tried a couple of alternates but finally we just went to a restaurant for an early lunch to figure things out. There was no way to get to our first night's lodging before midnight, so we called and tried to cancel all of our reservations. All were fine except one KOA in Lincoln City. They'd let us move a night, but not cancel. So we decided to ride to Bandon for the first night, then Lincoln City for the second.On the way to Bandon we crossed into Oregon, so we stopped to get pictures of the state signs.

There was also a group of teen agers on bikes taking their pictures too. We offered to take group pictures of them. The oldest might have been 20, but there were allot in their early teens. They were riding from Seattle to San Francisco as a group, 850 miles.

We started seeing the beautiful Oregon coastline and stopped several times for pictures. But even with stops and lollygagging, we got to the KOA by 5:30, so we had a very leisure night. The KOA was right off of the highway, but was completely wooded. All of the campsites and cabins had trees in and around it. You could barely see from one site to the next.There was a hamburger stand setup next to the office and we got burgers and fries there for dinner.

We spent the night in a one room cabin. It was great. This is an awesome way to travel!! We got up the next morning and had a nice pancake breakfast at the KOA. Because the Lincoln City KOA wouldn't refund the deposit, we thought we might stay there tonight. But it was only 160 miles away and we thought we could make it allot farther. So we were fuming a bit at having to stop there and thought we'd just blow off the deposit.But since we might have the time, we decided to backtrack a bit and go see the Cape Blanco lighthouse. When we got there the lighthouse was closed, but we were treated to the first of many beautiful views up the coast.

The wind was blowing very hard and it was cold, but we hiked around and took allot of pictures.When we finished that, we rode back past last night's KOA and on up to the town of Bandon. We followed signs out to a an overlook and got another fantastic view of beaches, haystacks (the big rocks just off the coast), and rocky bluffs.We rode on North, and stopped at the Coos Bay Harley Davidson. Remember, its not a trip without stops at the HD shops.

The next stop was the Coos bay lighthouse not far up the road but we couldn't drive to it but we got pictures.North of Coos bay we followed the signs off the highway and found the Umpqua lighthouse up on a high bluff with a museum nearby. For $3.00 we took a great tour of the area, and even got to climb up inside, and poke our heads up INTO the spinning lense. This lighthouse is still active and in constant use. It has a perfect Fresnel lens. Many of the lighthouses have been retired and most have been vandalized over the years, but this one is in pristine condition.The guide told us that the Coast Guard maintains the lighthouse. We learned about all of the work it took for 3 men and their families to keep the lighthouse running.

By the time we got to Newport, we'd ridden into and out of allot of fog banks. Every time we'd hit fog, the temperature would drop 15 degrees and we'd freeze, then we'd come out and slowly warm back up. Newport was in the fog, so we were very glad to get into a restaurant and warm back up again.The final 20 miles to the KOA was mostly through fog, so we skipped the last 2 lighthouses, and by the time we got to the Lincoln City KOA we were tired and not at all sorry to have to stop there.

Here's acouple more shots from the day. Back near the Oregon border I stopped to take a picture to show how huge the trees were. A car drove by and someone shouted "Tree Hugger!"