From Bandon in Oregan to visit Bob's friend Steve in Newport then on to Aberdeen in Washington State - we encounter a Tsunami Zone!

Distance 200 Miles. Total Distance  this trip to date 825 Miles
  

The real surprise of this trip is my discovery that the coast we are on is a Tsunami danger zone. Waves 100 feet high are expected any day now!


Bob takes up the story -"We have been encountering Tsunami Hazard Area signs along the coast since leaving Bandon and Eugene is very interested in what the hazard might be and how serious the threat is.

We also make a stop at an art gallery that has captured Eugene’s attention with its name; Tsunami Art Galley.  The Art Galley owner is a pretty talented sculptor in his own right and I really like a number of the pieces he has made and are for sale in the gallery.  However I really like a BMW 1200 GS really a lot better and they seem to be about the same price so I think I will hold out for the new bike and let others take care of the culture end of things.

 Bob's friend, Steve Lomax, who we are on our way to visit explains why there is a danger of a big Tsumani  -  Duration 2'30"

 But back to this ride as Bob again – “We have had a great ride into Bandon Oregon but a tiring one.  We had considered stopping a couple of times but did not like the look of the hotels, so we pressed on.  We decide on the Bandon Inn, which is located on top of a bluff overlooking the “Old Town” section of Bandon and the ocean beyond.  Our rooms both have panoramic views of the Pacific as the waves are rolling into the shore.  It is a beautiful and dramatic sight. 

One of the reasons we wanted to go through Bandon is that one of the newest and most highly rated golf courses is located on the coast just north of the town.  The Brandon Dunes course is one of four that the developers have built on a particularly dramatic parcel of land that fronts the seaside.  Many reviewers have claimed that this may be the best links type course in America.  My son Jason has played the track and he was full of high praise for both the course challenges and the views. 

Unfortunately one of the features of the development is that they do not allow motorized carts or buggies.  There is not doubt that their absence makes the golf experience better for the players but unfortunately this means I cannot play.  I might be able to struggle around the course but I would be very slow and hold up the play of others, which I am simply not willing to risk.  I talk to Eugene and we decide we should spend an additional night in Bandon and he should play a round without me. I had a breathing attack the first night we arrived while attempting to push the bike around a bit more than I should have, so I am pretty tired and not unhappy to have a day without too much activity. "

I linked up with two guys very friendly guys from Austin Texas. Bruce and Rod were accompanied by their wives, out for a walk for the first nine holes. Bruce and Rod had a very competitive match series going - it was fun to watch the good humoured angst as their game progressed.  They all made me feel very welcome - I am not great company for myself, after a while,  when playing 18 holes alone.

This is the Pacific View all along the 10th hole. Duration 30"

I do a load of laundry for us both while Eugene is playing and listen to his rave reviews of the course.  He said he thought it might be better than the best links course in Ireland, which is high praise indeed.  Probably not true, of course, but high praise never the less. 

I have my own personal Bandon Death March that evening when I decide I am feeling well enough to walk down to the town for dinner and walk back.  We find an interesting looking restaurant located as far down the waterfront as is possible but soon find that it is well worth the effort.  We are both hungry and fall back to our default setting by ordering two New York Strip steaks.  Both of us think that they are some of the best we have ever had and the experience is enhanced by our being the first people allowed onto the screened in outdoor,  dining section so far this year. This was the view below

It is right on the beach and we are treated to the antics of a solitary seal playing just beyond the surf line.  The “Death March” comes when I have to climb back up to the top of the bluff with a very full stomach.  Eugene is quite the trooper and stays with me the entire and very slow way back even though I encourage him to go on ahead.

We have a quite short ride of just over a hundred miles the next day to reach Newport Oregon where my friend Steve Lovas and his wife Sonia are now living.  They got fed up with the high cost and frequent storm damage that they were experiencing in New York where they had been living for 10 years and decided to completely remodel a vacation home they had bought when Steve was working in Portland as their main home.   They have done a marvellous job and created a warm and inviting home.  Along the way we come to a section of the coastline, which one of the signs identifies as the Lower Umpqua.

Bob at the Lower Umpqua

  I have been seeing more and more Umpqua Bank locations around the West and often questioned where in the Hell they came up with a name like that.  I guessed it must have been Indian in origin and maybe even owned by a tribal group.  There seems to be both a tribe and a river by the name so I guess I will have to Google it to find out the ownership.

We stop for lunch and find a another lovely spot in the coastal town of Florence, with a terrace overlooking the the sea.

We decide that the owners invite on the door makes a lot of sense!

We both have the lobster salad YUM YUM

Bob again "We arrive in Newport early in the afternoon and get o spend an enjoyable few hours catching up on all the happenings since Steve and I were both working together in Anchorage some 30 years ago.  (God, how time flies when you are having fun!)  Both Steve and I were close friends of Mike Holmstrom and we have a lot of fun telling stories at Mike’s expense.  Mike has been gone some 5 years now so he is probably laughing at the inaccuracy of our memories from somewhere up there.  I occurs to me that I am now about 8 months older than he was when he died which causes me a bit of a pause.

The Lovas’ have recommended a seafood restaurant in the old working part of the Newport waterfront and we all head down there for an early dinner.  “The Saffron Salmon” is located in an old converted pier that runs out over the rocky shore just inside the main Yaquina Bridge over its eponymous river."

 An old couple are crabbing from the walkway just beyond the restaurant’s door and we are treated to them hauling in a number of Dungeness crabs during dinner.  As far as I could determine however, they did not catch any of large enough size to be keepers and they would toss them back.  Trying however to not put them right back in the same spot so they would end up catching the same illegal crab numerous times.  We had talked with the couple briefly when we came in and they told us that they were only allowed to keep male crabs and had to return all the female ones.  Somehow this just does not seem fair to me.  I think we humans should be non-gender biased eaters when it comes to crabs but then nobody asked my opinion.  That seems to be happening a lot lately.  One person who did take my opinion is Eugene and he orders Halibut instead of Salmon for dinner.  I have the fish stew which is a bouillabaisse type dish without the tomatoes.  We are both well satisfied and I think the Lovas’ dinners were great as well.  We are extremely pleased with the recommendation.

Bob explains to me how the CRAB TRAP works that was so successful in catching crabs for the couple we were watching while having dinner.

Next Morning we ride up to a little coastal town famous for its Oyster fishing - South BBend - just 30 minutes short of Aberdeen 

Bob takes up the story " We leave Steve and Sonia’s feeling very good about things in general and where pleased to have had such a pleasant visit.  Our expectation as we headed North on US 101 was that we would see some of the best costal scenery anywhere in the world.  And we did.  But I was a bit surprised that it was not even more spectacular.  From all the build-up we had received, I thought that it would put California’s Northern and Central coasts to shame but I thought they were nearly as spectacular.  The 101 route itself it great in this section since it is almost always right on the water and every turn in the road offe4rs a new and different vista.  We kept encountering Tusuanami Danger Area signs which always caught Eugene’s interest.  I am just glad we did not have one while we were there.

We took a number of back routes in order to stay close to the coast and made a couple of stops at Art Galleries and Bigfoot locations so we did not cover a lot of distance before we were ready to call it a day.  We started looking for a motel around Astoria Oregon which is just on the south bank for the massive Columbia River which forms the border between Washington and Oregon.  We decided to check in the old downtown section to see if we could find something cheap.  I know we were going to be more than usual in Canada and hoped to save a bit before we got there.  I took a wrong turn on the Business 101 road and ended up doing a big loop in order to end up almost right back where we started.

  I turned out to be fortuitous however since we went by a Historical Marker for Camp Clatsop.  This is where the Lewis and Clark Explorer Party spent the hungry winter of 1804-1805.  

Although the party faced almost unbelievable hardships both on the way out and on the return, they only lost one member of their original 33 party.  I did not know where the Camp had been located and was happy to have happened upon the spot.  Eugene, less so.  I do not think he had ever heard of Lewis and Clark or the Louisiana Purchase but he quickly picked up on the fact that it was a great land deal when I told him that I thought the cost was less than 15 cents per acre.  He was really shocked to find out that the deal done some 65 years later by Secretary of State William Seward to purchase Alaska from the Russian Tzar was at a price of less than 2 cents per acre.  

Bob tells story of the US purchase of lands from Napoleon and the Lewis and Clarke expedition

 

Regardless of how compelling a visit to Fort Clatsop might have been, we decide to push on over the Columbia and into Washington.  After putting in another hour or so, I stop at the first town we encounter which is South Bend, Washington.  South Bend`s appeal to me is that it is there and it has a motel.  As it turns out, it is also famous for its oysters and its historic Courthouse.  An imposing building that dominates the town and which we pass by on our way to the motel.

We also had to cross the huge  bridge over the Columbia river that is the southern border of Washington State.