Day 4 and 5 – The Fog Rolls In

If you are just tuning in,you may want to check out the table of contents first.

We woke up early and packed up camp, decided to eat breaky in the next town we found a breakfast restaurant in. We found a Denny’s somewhere, can’t remember the town name.

Kelsey had buffalo chicken strips for breakfast, she’s a weird kid when it comes to breakfast food! Here she eats her leftovers:

Our next stop was about five hours south, so we didn’t stop too much for photos, we figured we’d stop at a few place now and a few places on our way back up.

The roads can be a little intense:

We came across this cute beach and stopped. We beach combed for a bit, this was a cool little beach and one of my favorite stops. We found some neat shells too.

I don’t know this person, but put him in my photo anyway.

There were lots of tidal pools full of anemones that we poked:

These were neat coloured sea snails:

A single flower growing out of the sand:

Next stop was a lighthouse and the keepers house high on the bluff. What a spectacular place to live!

Kelsey climbed a big dead tree:

While I took photos of the big cement bridge:

I’ve taken up rock balancing/building, and I like to leave these pretty much everywhere I go as a gift to whoever follows me and may enjoy looking at them.

I’ve been teaching Kelsey how to build them, she decided to take photos of me doing it this time instead:

We arrived at our campsite at Umpqua Lighthouse State Park around midday and it immediately started to fog over. Kelsey wasn’t feeling very good, so she went for a nap in the tent while we went for a walk around the campsite. We were near the dunes, but off the beach and I really didn’t like it as much.

Cabins can be rented also:

We went back an hour or so later and woke Kelsey up to go for a drive down to the dunes and to check out the old lighthouse that is still a working lighthouse.

Out in the water a ways off in the distant a foghorn blew about every 20 or 30 seconds. It was a very eerie, unsettling sound. Maybe I’ve seen too many horror movies.

We drove down to see the dunes which are quite weird…it’s like a desert on the coast.

We watched the crazy ATV’ers and decided that given the fog and our limited ATV experience, none of us felt comfortable renting and riding ATVs here.

We went to see the beach, and came across these guys:

Other various photos:

We stopped for some coffee and drinks, then returned to our campsite for card games and early to bed.

DAY 5

We woke up to a VERY foggy morning. After pancakes and bacon, we packed up and headed out early hoping we might be able to find some sun somewhere. On the way we stopped to check out the lighthouse again, which glowed in the dark fog.

The expansive beaches just never end!

Tillicum Beach was humongous:

That’s a lot of freaking instructions!

As you can see, as we drove north the sun began to shine. When we reached out next destination at Cape Lookout State Park, it was a beautiful, hot day.

This was a favorite camping site, the sites were nice and private and even closer to the beach than the first one. After we set up camp the kids decided they wanted to try swimming. Kelsey used Jorden’s shorts as she had forgotten her swim suit at the first hotel.

Swimming didn’t last long, of course, that water is like ice!

We spotted a little jellyfish, then a BIG one:

kelsey started feeling really crappy again and we went back and she stayed napping at the tent while we drove the short distance into town to grab some supplies. We saw these humongous Planet of the Apes rocks at the beach there:

Then we found this neat but crowded little trinket/junk shop:

Jorden got the fire ready for the night when we returned, and after some bbq hamburgers and salad we headed to the beach to catch the sunset.

It was unfortunately cloudy, so we wouldn’t see the whole sunset.

Back at camp, Jorden got the fire going and we cooked up some smores:

Tomorrow we would head to the Oregon State Fair.