New day, new beach town!

Our nights in Crescent City weren’t great for sleep. Our motel was used by nearby road construction workers, who stayed out late, returned with loud outdoor conversations and door slamming, and left early in their trucks with a chorus of back up beeping.

We headed back north toward Oregon, and once we passed Brookings we were on the Samuel Boardman Scenic Corridor. The coastline is spectacular, with sheer rock cliffs and jagged out croppings in the sea. The surf roars and booms against the shore. We stopped at too many viewpoints and beaches to count, each as beautiful as the last.

Bob busied himself creating birthday messsges in the sand, his artistic side becoming more expressive with each go!

We decided to hike from the Natural Bridges viewpoint to another outlook called Thunder Rock Cove. The hike was short but narrow and steep, and reached a high spit with sheer cliffs dropping away on both sides. Bob continued but my stomach turned inside out and I had to sit down and focus on a tree root, then tiptoe gingerly back with my eyes fixed straight ahead. I don’t know why some people skip merrily along with death a step away and others (me) have an animal brain that kicks in and says “hell no we aren’t going there”.

We trekked out to the Cape Blanco lighthouse, imagining the life a lighthouse keeper must have led. Could I have done it? I don’t think I’d like to be holed up in a lighthouse on the cold stormy Oregon coast. Maybe a Hawaiian lighthouse would be ok?

The Howard house, a Victorian beauty standing alone at the rugged coast and built by an early European settler, stands preserved nearby. We laughed at a pointing sign labeled restroom that just pointed into the bushes

We finally arrived at Bandon, only 90 miles north but a full day of exploring later. Bandon is adorable and charming and clean, so incredibly clean. Not a stray leaf or scrap of trash. I don’t know how a town buffeted by winter coastal storms can be so clean.

Our little inn was next to the Bandon Marina and in the core of old town.

Most of the stores were closed, but we walked the streets and explored an art gallery. We visited Washed Ashore, an art and education program which creates art out of trash washed ashore, to educate people about the impact of plastics snd styrofoam that last forever.

We had fish tacos and chowder at a little beach shack that will wash and cook your own crab to order. And called it a day, totally spent!