Bandon, Oregon   All Pictures   (Bandon,  Game Park Safari,  Shore Acres Botanical Gardens,  Sunset Bay,  4th of July Parade 

June 30, 2010                           

We took the Beach Loop Drive along the coast stopping at a few places to see rock formations with names like Table Rock, Point Rock, Elephant Rock, Face Rock, Cat and Kittens Rocks and one that looked like a Seal.  The coastline is rocky and just beautiful and the homes along the cliffs are really nice.  

Game Park Safari  -  Game Park Safari

Bandon, Oregon                   

This is the largest walk through free roaming wildlife petting zoo.  There are goats, deer, sheep, long horn sheep and peacocks roaming around that you can touch and feed.  There was an area just inside the entrance where you can handle and pet lion and tiger cubs.  Guess who did it.  I sat crossed leg on the ground and the trainer brought out two four-week old lion cubs and put them on my lap.  Oh, I was in heaven.  They are sooo cute and they just loved being petted.  Their fur was on the course.  Only minutes later the trainer said my time was up and I had to leave so others could have a turn.  We walked around the park and I came back again for the tigers.  This time there was a line and I had to wait and was lucky enough to get in before the trainer cut off the line and took them back in.  Once again I sat on the ground and the trainer put three three-week old Siberian Tiger cubs on my lap.  Wow, I am really in heaven now.  All three were climbing all over me.  I held one rubbing his belly and I heard “Puff, puff”.  The trainer said they make that noise when they are content....Puff, Puff....The fur on the tigers was much softer than the lions and they were soooo very cute.  She allowed me a little more time this time but I sure could have played with them all day long.  Boy this is fun. 

Shore Acres State Park & Botanical Gardens  -  Shore Acres Botanical Gardens

Coos Bay, Oregon

The scenery is awesome.  The entire park was once the private estate of Louis J. Simpson, lumberman and shipbuilder.  He built a house on these cliffs as a surprise for his first wife in 1907.  He had extensive gardens, ponds and a dairy complex.  The house burned down in 1921, was rebuilt for his second wife but sold to the State of Oregon after his death.  The mansion was used as a barracks and officers club during World War II but left unused until 1948 when it was demolished.  It wasn’t until 1974 when Oregon State Parks rehabilitated Shore Acres, redesigning the gardens and improving the area and recreating the Botanical Gardens.  The gardens are acres of native and exotic plants and flowers but there wasn’t too much in bloom now except for the roses in the Rose Garden that were just beautiful.

Sunset Bay State Park  -  Sunset Bay

Bandon, Oregon

What an absolute beautiful place.  The bay is small surrounded by rocks and high cliffs, has a beautiful beach and is so peaceful.  We also stopped at an overlook and took a picture of Cape Arago Lighthouse.  This lighthouse is actually on an island in the Coos Bay and built in 1864.  The lighthouse that stands there now is the third one and in 1966 it was decommissioned.  It’s not open to the public but makes for a beautiful picture.

July 4th Parade  -  4th of July Parade

We drove downtown this morning to watch the 4th of July parade at 10am.  To our surprise downtown was almost like a ghost town; there was no one around and even the parking spaces were empty.  We parked in the Visitor Center and walked around meeting a guy who said nothing happens until quarter to 10 AM or so.  By 20 minutes to 10 AM there still were no barriers, no police and no people.  10 minutes to 10 AM there was a swarm of people.  By 10 AM we saw a helicopter fly overhead, what a way to start a parade.  This was followed by a few trucks with flags and lots of kids, bikes, kids dressed in costumes and a few small floats with kids inside.  The fire trucks and a bunch of corvettes followed that and a few floats with Miss Cranberry and a youth group and some old cars.  Next came local businesses and more classic cars followed by a few boats and a riding club with eight horses with decorated hooves, manes and even sparkles on their rumps.  That was it.  We were surprised that there were no marching bands or even high school bands at all and no military veterans.  It only lasted half an hour.  After the parade we went to the city park where there were booths set up with mostly hand crafts, jewelry and a three-piece band that only played one song while we were there.  Inside the community building there was an arts and crafts show going on and we walked through that.  Here to were lots of towels, rugs, aprons and the like.  They didn’t even have any bake goods.  There are supposed to be fireworks tonight but loads of clouds just came in and it was getting cold.   But, around 10 PM the first set of fireworks went off.  After fifteen minutes there was what we thought was the grand finale so we started walking back to the car when we heard more.  We decided to sit inside the car to watch whatever was left.  It turned out that there were ten more minutes of fireworks and another grand finale.  They were pretty good. 

Florence, Oregon      All Pictures   (Sea Lion Caves,  Heceta Head Lighthouse,  Sand Dunes Buggy Ride 

Sea Lion Caves  -  Sea Lion Caves            

Florence, Oregon                   

We saw sea lions in their natural habitat at the Sea Lion Caves.  This is the world’s largest sea cave that is as long as a football field and 12-stories high.  You enter a building that sits on the cliffs right on US-101 that’s a gift shop and entrance to the cave.  You walk outside and to the left is a walkway down the slopes to an observation deck.  From here you can see dozens of sea lions on a large rock sunning themselves.  To the right is another walkway down the slope to an elevator.  This elevator takes you 204 feet down into a cave adjacent to the Sea Lion Cave where you can see them safely from a distance.  You can look and take pictures behind a fence without a flash.  The sea lions are wild and they don’t want to disturb them.  There were dozens of sea lions on the rocks inside the cave.  These guys can grow to 12 feet and up to 2400 pounds and the noise from the cave at times was very noisy.  Inside our cave was a skeleton of a sea lion and a short film.  We walked up a few sets of steps to an observation deck to see the Heceta Head Lighthouse and coastline.  What a view and it looked really neat through the cave. 

Heceta Head Lighthouse Park  -  Heceta Head Lighthouse & Coastline

Florence, Oregon

The beach is nice surrounded by cliffs.   We couldn’t see the lighthouse because it was obscured by trees and there were no tours the day we went.  The lighthouse was built in 1894 and the light shines a beam visible for 21 miles out to sea, making it the strongest light on the Oregon coast.  It is also one of the most photographed lighthouses on the coast.  We came through a tunnel and over a really neat looking bridge called the Cape Creek Bridge.  This arch bridge spans the Cape Creek and is reminiscent of a Roman aqueduct.  It was opened in 1932 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Sand Dunns Buggy Ride  -  Sand Dunes Buggy Ride

Florence, Oregon

Florence is at the northern end of the Oregon Sand Dunes and I went on a sand dune buggy ride.  The Sandland Adventures runs the sand dune buggy rides and there were 17 people on my tour. We were all assigned seats and mine was right next to the driver up front.  This was a scenic tour so we didn’t go real fast, but we did go up and down the dunes and some of them were really steep; we were all glad we had seat belts and the buggy had good brakes.  The dunes are unbelievable.  They stretch for 40 miles along the coast as the Oregon Dunes National Park.  The dunes change constantly and some can reach heights up to 235 feet.  We rode down one dune that our driver estimated to be 100 to 150 feet high and boy was that a thrill.  We stopped several times for pictures and to point out the sea grass, the highest dune, the lake and the ocean.  Our driver said that the sea grass was planted to help keep the dunes from eroding and now they are overrun by it.  We rode out to the beach and the fog was so thick all we could see was a few feet of the coastline and boy was it COLD!  After about two miles in the fog, lots of wind and sea spray, we turned around.  They told us to dress warm and now I was glad I wore my sweatshirt, heavy coat and my windbreaker because I needed them all.  The beach is smooth with no driftwood, no trees no grass and no shells.  We finally came back into the dunes and off the beach and it was like instant warmth.  Sandland Adventures also rents ATVs and there were plenty of them on the dunes that looked like fun too.  There was a nice lake and a special area for sand boarding.  We saw a few trying but they weren’t making much progress.  We continued to go up and down the dunes for almost an hour.  It was a lot of fun. 

Newport, Oregon          All Pictures   (Newport,  Astoria) 

July 11, 2010                     

The Yaquina Bay State Park and Yaquina Bay Lighthouse has a beautiful view of the coastline, Yaquina Bay and the Yaquina Bay Bridge.  This Arch Bridge was built in 1931 bringing US-101 into Newport and the Yaquina Bay State.  We toured the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse which is the second oldest standing lighthouse and Oregon's tallest lighthouse at 93 feet.  We continued on to the historic bay front of Newport, Oregon.  The Bay front area is pretty neat with plenty of shops and restaurants but most of the area is taken up by fish markets and commercial fish processing plants.  The smell of fish is very prominent.  We explored four of the attractions there.  There is a small Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum where everything is in the dark with things like a shrunken head, a woman with a real long neck, the four-eyed Chinese Emperor and King Tuts Tomb.  We kept thinking something was going to jump out at us but nothing did.  They also had a thing called the Fiji Mermaid that looked really strange.  Afterwards we went into the Butterfly Adventures which is only two rooms that had mostly Monmouth butterflies that flew all around you.  One landed on my sweater and I put it on my finger.  It sat there even as I walked into the other room and probably would have continued to sit there if I hadn’t put it on a flower.  It only took us five minutes to walk through the whole thing.  The Wax Works is another museum that was pretty cool.  They had wax figures of movie stars, bad guys, vampires, Bigfoot, and a movie about Mount Saint Helen.  They also had a neat dragon, a large voodoo mask made into a rock wall but the most interesting was a bridge through a tunnel with a large rotating cylinder going around the bridge as you walked across.  It was hard to keep your balance and walk in a straight line.  The Undersea Gardens is in a ship in the harbor and once inside you walk down into an area about 10 feet below the surface of the bay.  All around you is a 2,000,000 liter tank that houses numerous species of fish and ocean plant life all found in the Pacific Ocean.  We saw all kinds of fish, sea sponges, crabs, a ten-foot Sturgeon, a Wolf Eel and a small tide pool with the prettiest orange Sea Stars.  They also put on a show where a scuba diver picked up a Dungeness crab, a large Sun Star and displayed them at the tank windows for everyone to see.  He tried to get an Octopus but it wasn’t cooperating.  Hey, we’ve been to Newport, Rhode Island on the east coast and now Newport, Oregon on the west coast. 

Astoria, Oregon  -  Astoria 

We took a ride into Astoria, Oregon.  The first thing you see is Astoria on the hill and the Astoria Bridge.  The bridge is 4.1 miles long and was included in movies such as Kindergarten Cop, Free Willy, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, The Goonies, Short Circuit and more. It crosses over the Columbia River from Astoria, Oregon to Washington and built to withstand a river flood speed of nine miles per hour and strong winds.  It’s really high, long and impressive.  Astoria is built among the hills and on the top of Coscomb Hill is the Astoria Column.  This column stands 125 feet tall much like a lighthouse tower and has fourteen 25-foot-long scenes representing the triumphs, conflicts and turning points of the Pacific Northwest.  It was built in 1926 as a promotion of commerce and travel by the Great Northern Railway.  The scenes are actually a combination of painting and carving into the concrete structure.  It is fascinating.  Jack walked up several sets of steps that wined around inside and out onto the platform at the top.  He said the view was awesome.  The views from the top of the hill were pretty great too with views of the Pacific Ocean, Oregon coast, Washington coast, the Columbia River and Astoria.  We also checked out the Goonies House, a house on 38th street where Mikey and Brand lived in the movie The Goonies.  Of course it’s been 25 years since that filming and now there is considerably more evergreen growth which helps to obscure the view of the house.  The brochure said the restaurant in the movie owned by the Fratelli’s was only a façade which was torn down after filming but the rocks in the ocean was Haystack in Cannon Beach.  Astoria is built in between the Columbia River and Youngs Bay and is much like San Francisco with roads going up and down hills.  There are a lot of nice shops and coffee cafes.  Most of the buildings in town are dated in the early 1900’s with interesting architecture.  We walked up to the impressive Victorian home of Capt. George Favel called Favel House built in 1885.  They say the house has wonderful woodwork, exotic hardwood fireplace mantels and period furnishings but it was closed.  We then walked over to the Oregon Film Museum & Jail.  It is an old jail with two rooms of the jail with bunk beds and a few items from the Goonies movie.  One had the vest and punching belt made by Dada in the movie.  In the other cells were cardboard stand ups and in another larger room were pictures and artifacts from The Goonies movie, including the statue, skeleton keys and map props.  They only had a listing of other movies filmed in Astoria.  I really thought it would be more than it was because they say there have been eight movies made here but I guess none were as notable as The Goonies.

McMinnville, Oregon

Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum - Home of the Sprue Goose       Pictures

McMinnville, Oregon                              

One day we drove into McMinnville to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum.  There are three buildings to this museum with another one being built.  The Evergreen Aviation Museum is built around the Spruce Goose.  The Spruce Goose dubbed the “Flying Boat” is entirely made out of wood and the largest airplane ever constructed but flown only once on November 2, 1947.  During the war the government commissioned Howard Hughes to build a plane as a personnel and material carrier to fly transatlantic to avoid the World War II German submarines.  He was granted $18,000,000 to do so but due to a government mandate not to use materials critical to the war effort (such a steel and aluminum), he made it out of wood.  Hughes and his staff worked from 1942 to 1947 exceeding the $18,000,000 federal dollars.  The project was going to be cancelled due to cost overruns and much criticism about the planes ability to fly, that Hughes spent $7,000,000 of his own money to keep the project going.  After completion, he “flew” The Spruce Goose a little over a mile and 70 feet above the water for about one minute.  That was its only flight.  After this famous flight, it was put in hibernation for thirty-three years and Hughes ordered to keep it in immaculate flight-ready condition.  This was rumored to have cost him $1 million a year.  After Hughes death in 1976, the plane was to be disassembled but was saved by entrepreneur Jack Wrather and eventually sold to the Evergreen Museum founder where it was transported to the Evergreen museum in McMinnville, Oregon.  This thing is HUGE!  You can walk inside what seemed to be the second level of three where the troops and tanks would have been.  The main workings is below and the cockpit above.  One fact that was really amazing was each wing, which spans 20 feet longer than a football field and supports four 5,000 pound engines, is not supported by anything.  One guide in the museum said the wings have not warped or bent over two-inches since it was built.  There are other planes in the museum from 1940’s to 1960’s like the Wright Brother’s 1903 Flyer replica, Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress, McDonnell-Douglas F-15 and others.  Upstairs is the Captain Michael King Smith Firearms collection with 18 cases of firearms from Civil War to present day. 

The next building is the Evergreen Space Museum that has planes, shuttles and exhibits on space travel.  They have replicas of the Sputnik, a Titan II Missile, Gemini spacecraft, a lunar module, a lunar roving vehicle, a Lockheed Blackbird, a Northrop Talon, a Mercury 7 exhibit and lot of other exhibits.  I tried my hand at landing a space shuttle and Jack said he would never travel with me because I crashed, not once but twice!  In between the two museums is an IMAX theater but we didn’t do that.  The museums are very impressive and very interesting and well worth the trip.  We met a really nice couple from St. Augustine, Florida and talked about the place so much, they changed their plans to stop there. 

Cannon Beach, Oregon       All Pictures   (Cannon Beach.  Tillamook Cheese,  Seaside,  Helicopter Ride) 

July 17, 2010                             

Cannon Beach, Oregon is another seaside town that is extremely busy with people everywhere.  There are several blocks of restaurants, ice cream shops, cafes and other shops.  You should be able to find just about anything here from clothing to jewelry and they have lots of jewelry stores.  There were hundreds of people on the beach even though there was no sun and it was only 64 degrees.  Guess this is warm to them.  Downtown there are so many homes, condos and motels along the coastline; we really didn’t see much of it.  We walked down to the beach that was beautiful and what a backdrop with the Haystack Rock just off shore.  We even saw a few people horseback riding on the beach.  I’m going to do that soon.

Seaside, Oregon  -  Seaside

Once in Seaside we found a really good restaurant called Bigfoot’s Steakhouse with some of the best prime rib that just melted in your mouth.  Seaside is another really busy and popular place with people everywhere.  Seaside is a typical seaside town and reminded us of Seaside in New Jersey with all the shops.  The whole downtown area takes up several streets, not just one or two and there are lots of other shops and restaurants.  We stopped at the Seaside Candyman candy store that had 170 flavors of salt water taffy, 70 flavors of Jelly Belly beans plus popcorn and chocolates.  We have never seen so many flavors in one place.  There is also a small mall that has a Carrousel in the middle with all kinds of animals.  But the thing Seaside is famous for is called “The Prom” and the Lewis and Clark monument.  The monument stands in the middle of a turnaround at the end of Broad Street at the beach and is where Lewis and Clark ended their exploration to the west coast and met the Pacific Ocean.  Right here on this spot history was made.  The oceanfront promenade (The Prom), is a boardwalk that runs 1.8 miles from one end to the other.  We walked about half way in one direction and to the end of the other then walked through the residential area back to the beach.  Most of the homes in Seaside are small cottages with a few larger homes in between and the beach is long, wide and beautiful as are all the beaches along the coast.  There were lots of people on the beach but no one in the water because it was still only about 74 degrees and the water was still really cold.  We were told that the summer here along the coast doesn’t come until September or October.  For weeks, the temperature has been from 60 to 74 but just over the mountains the temperature is in the high 90s. 

Tillamook Cheese Factory  -  Tillamook Cheese

While traveling, we decided to stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory for an hour.  It is a large processing plant and when we walked in there was a line.  We got in and found out it was to go by the cheese samples and into the Gift Shop.  We walked back around the saw a sign for a self tour pointing up to the Observation Deck.  You watch around the room and look through thick glass at the packaging of the cheese down below.  Huge blocks of cheese come down a conveyer belt where it is inspected, cut, stacked and packaged in large chunks and individual size packages.  The actual processing to make the cheese is not shown, only the large tanks on the other side of the room.  Then you come back down the steps to the gift shop.  From the samples we had, the cheese is very good and creamy. 

Helicopter Ride  -  Helicopter Ride

Seaside, Oregon

While in Seaside, I took a helicopter ride.  Yep, that’s right, a helicopter ride.  The company was right up the street from our campground and we passed it every time we went out.  I kept thinking about it and one day just decided to give it a try.  The shortest ride is over Seaside and never doing this before I decided to do that one.  The helicopter only holds four people and just after I arrived there, a woman and her two young girls showed up wanting to take a ride, perfect.  They have you fill out a form with your name and weight; as much as I hate to admit my weight, this is one time you shouldn’t lie about it.  Then they have you sign a “we are not responsible if anything goes wrong” statement.  Just then my hand started to shake.  They then show you a short film about the four-point harness safety belt, where the fire extinguisher was located and how you should not walk into the rotors.  Now my legs are going weak!  They take you out to the helicopter and help you buckle in.  Hey, those kids were all excited, laughing and wanted to go; I certainly couldn’t back out now.  The woman sat with her two girls in the back while I sat in the front next to the pilot.  After he harnessed me in he put headphones on everyone and even took a picture of us.  He then started the helicopter, which was really noisy, and turned on the headphones; that’s much better and we could talk to each other.  I had windows in front of me, to the left of me, to the right of me beyond the pilot and even at my feet.  It was like flying in a bubble!  We flew over the Columbia River and Seaside then turned and flew over the ocean back north passing over our campground.  The pilot was talking to me and turned around and flew over our campground again so I could take a picture; nice guy.  The flight was only about ten minutes but WOW, it sure was fun and I loved it.