Leaving the Oregon Coast for Time with Family

Our last few days on the Oregon coast were spent at Bullards Beach State Park in Bandon along with friends Dennis and Sheryl and their sweet puppy, Phoebe. Lots of beach walking and some delicious dinners together rounded out our time together. While we moved on to Roseburg and family, they moved South towards home in Tucson...we look forward to meeting up again somewhere, sometime and are grateful we had these few days of travel together.

Young Phoebe learns about all sorts of unusual goodies on a cloudy morning at the beach.

The Coquille River lighthouse shines under bright morning sun at Bullards Beach State Park.

Our home of record is Myrtle Creek, OR, specifically my daughters house, just on the outskirts of Roseburg, OR. Once again we are staying at On the River Golf & RV Resort, a pretty little private park just a couple of miles from Chantal's house.

The RV park sits at the base of a small mountain and their property encompasses about 135 acres, including about a third of said mountain. Some years ago the owners purchased a few Scottish Highlander cattle because of their reputation for clearing brush, including blackberries and poison oak. The cattle now number 20 and do a decent job of eating away the mountainside brush and RV park visitors are welcome to walk the property. Well, it's climb the property actually, as the dirt roads on the mountainside are very steep! We'll huff and puff up the nearly vertical dirt roads on the lookout for cattle and deer and enjoy expansive views of the surrounding countryside.

This young Scottish Highlander was curious about us...as he approached Hans,
Hans backpedaled, not quite sure of his intent!

Tackling the final, nearly vertical, ascent to the top of On The River RV Park's property.

The RV park includes lots of pretty landscaping, we enjoyed these lily's just steps from our site.

Our time with Chantal and James includes a yard work fix for me. At the end of summer Chantal has had more than enough of her gardens bounty and we get to help her get rid of some of it. We got to do some gardening and some canning together, good mother daughter bonding time!

This is just a portion of our take from the garden during our stay!

Our big project this year was to bring water down from the house to Chantal's veggie garden, about 75 feet away and down a slope. We spent one morning trenching and another morning buying and assembling the system...mission accomplished!

This was the fun part...not!
The goal was to bring water to the small gate on the left of the photo.

Son in law James gave us a tour of his place of employment, where a variety of aluminum boats are built.

James and Hans inspect a just finished boat.

Chantal and Hans and I took a day trip to Eugene where we did a bunch of shopping and enjoyed a beer tasting at McMenamins High Street Brewery.

Hans drove to Eugene while Chantal gave me a crochet lesson in the back seat!

The Mid-Valley Brewfest event included 5 McMenamins beers and 5 seasonals from other local breweries.

For the third year in a row we played our favorite disc golf course at Whistlers Bend Park, just East of Roseburg, OR. (Here's a post from the first time we played this course.) This time was a little different; more campsites are being constructed which caused some havoc with the first few holes and threw off the numbers for the following holes...but we still had an excellent time and shared the course with no one but the local deer on a Monday morning (though we've heard the place is very busy on the weekends). We learned some of the new camp sites will have hookups.

Note Hans, on the left, throwing his yellow disc over the deer who is in front of the basket!

North Bank Habitat Management Area is one of the few hiking spots around Roseburg. This year we hiked a fantastic six mile loop that took us up over rolling hills covered with golden grasses to big views and down through oak and pine, cedar and madrone forests. We hoped to see wild turkey and deer which are abundant in the area but instead saw a black bear! He was about 100 yards in front of us, paused briefly to see what we were, then moved quickly into the brush.

You can even see a smidgen of the North Umpqua River in this shot.
Clouds were moving in for a storm that would start that night.

From open vistas to deep green, cedar scented forest, the variety of habitats on this hike was wonderful.

And this bear sighting was the icing on the cake!

Fall seems to have arrived, the first good rain storm is happening today and this area really needs it. We'll have one last dinner with Chantal tonight, then head South to Ashland tomorrow. Once again we've had an excellent stay, visiting with Chantal and James and her dad and step mom too (thanks Sue for the smokey chipotle chutney!). Though it is always hard to leave Chantal, we'll take away massive amounts of home grown produce and, even better, good memories.