August 2, 2016 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 42: The Wild Oregon Coast

We left California for good in mid-April, headed towards Oregon, after having spent just shy of three months in the Golden State. We had a lot of great adventures in California, and we were pretty sad to leave.

That said, the gas in Oregon is extraordinarily cheaper than in California, which made things a little more palatable.  (Unsurprisingly, the RV uses a lot of gas.)  Speaking of palatable, our next stop was a quick 2 nights along the Oregon coast. After our last, redwoods-sized redwoods post, a bite-sized blog sounds just right.

Dino-mite!

The drive up the Oregon coast on Highway 101 was spectacular, winding along the Pacific Ocean. The area is definitely hilly, and we feared a white-knuckle drive, but Oregon turned out to be a very RV-friendly state. The grades and curves were relatively gentle, and there were plenty of pull-offs, offering scenic views and a respite from angry tailgaters. We probably saw more RVs per mile on this stretch than anywhere else in the country (except Quartzsite!).

We stopped along the way to our destination to visit the Prehistoric Gardens, a quirky roadside attraction of local fame. The turn into the Gardens was pretty white-knuckle, due to… let’s call it, “user error regarding the amount of braking required,” but it was all worth since we got to take selfies with 23 life-size dinosaurs.

At the time they were built, the displays and the statues were all scientifically accurate, which we appreciate.  Of course, since the oldest statues here were almost sixty years old, you won’t find anything about feathers or avian evolution here. Nonetheless, the whimsical coloring and beautiful foliage more than made up for it, and overall, it was an A+ roadside stop.

Quick Sand

After our visit to the Jurassic, we pulled into our campground at the awesome Jessie M. Honeyman State Park. This was about the sixth state park with RV spots we passed in 50 miles; as we said, it’s a very RV-friendly state. The next day, we started out by exploring a very surprising Oregon find: sand dunes!

We had no idea until we got there, but it turned out the whole southern Oregon coast features massive sand dunes, 80+ feet high! It seemed like every other place we passed offered dune buggy rentals or tours, but we kept things simple and just walked around the dunes behind our campsite. This pedestrian approach turned out to be rather exhausting, as the shifting sand made every climb three times harder than necessary, but we ended up with some awesome photos.

Guess all our practice in White Sands and Death Valley paid off.  Or did it…

Making Waves

The real reason we came to the Oregon coast was to visit Cape Perpetua, a narrow bit of coast with some unusual properties. The waves here crash hard, and they have eaten away at the rocky shore with spectacular results. There’s the Spouting Horn, a narrow crevice which launches water into the air with each wave:

Here’s a video of the Spouting Horn in action.  A few feet away is Thor’s Well, a literal hole in the ocean that fills and empties with the pounding surf.

Just a few hundred yards further is the Devil’s Churn, a long, narrow crack in the coastal rock.   Water enters and drains from the crack with each wave, as at Thor’s Well, but the result is far more explosive.

Pictures can’t possibly do it justice, so we took a video.  Unfortunately, the video doesn’t really do it justice either, so just imagine the world shaking with each wave!

If you’re curious, we visited Cape Perpetua just before high tide, as is recommended.  It was during a lull in a pretty fierce thunderstorm, so the waves were powerful. However, as we were photographing Thor’s Well, the wind started gusting, first lightly, then with increasing power. The lull was over, and the wind quickly ramped up towards gale-force.  In seconds, the entire place cleared out of people.

We wisely – and quickly – retreated to a nearby pub to watch the storm howl over the ocean.  Cape Perpetua is definitely an exciting place to visit, but we wouldn’t recommend going swimming.

Previous Post: Week 41-42: The Redwoods

Next Post: Week 43: Portland, Oregon

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Where are you now?  A little coffee shop in Rapid City, South Dakota.  The Black Hills are beautiful, but a little light on the Internet…

Next location?  Heading up north to Devil’s Tower, then Teddy Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota!

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September 11, 2015 In Road Trip, Travelogues

Week 6: Road Through Rhode Island

Cast your mind back to the halcyon days of early August.  Everything was different then; the summer still stretched before us, Labor Day just the fevered nightmare of students and wearers of white.  Geno Smith hadn’t yet been punched in the jaw by his own teammate, and Zimbabwe had not yet defeated New Zealand by seven wickets in Harare, which is an actual headline we found (six balls to spare!).  Donald Trump was somehow a viable presidential candidate… well, never mind that one.

But we at Nothing Mundane did not yet have a car.  And now we do!

Yes, in early August while staying in Rhode Island, we successfully purchased a used 2010 Honda Fit, which is tiny, hopefully trustworthy, and eminently towable behind our RV.  It’s been a huge improvement over our previous world, in which we had to drive our thirty-one foot motorhome over questionable roads into unfamiliar small towns in order to do basically anything.  This would typically involve a lot of hopped curbs, panicked 27-point turns in the middle of busy intersections, and our nemesis:  speed bumps.

Ever gone over a speed bump with your house?  Everything sounds like it’s going to break:  dishes, glassware, the crystal chandelier decorated with razor blades which dangles directly over us while we drive.  It can be a little nerve-wracking.

But now, those days are (mostly) over, thanks to our glorious new (extremely used) car!  Wonder what we did with it…

Providence

So glad you asked.  The first thing we did after getting the car was drive to nearby Providence, Rhode Island.  Providence turned out to be pretty unexciting, except that the roads are insane and were entirely under construction, which was a fun test for our brand new (extremely used) car.  We walked around the campus at Brown (motto:  “the grandfathered Ivy”) and ate some crepes, but didn’t end up with much in the way of pictures or stories.  We did spot this very strange sculpture which we rather enjoyed, though.

Newport Cliff Walk

Next up was the Newport Cliff Walk, which is a semi-famous path along the ocean in Newport, Rhode Island with nice views and large houses.  Newport is in southern Rhode Island while Providence is more northern Rhode Island, so it took upwards of forty-five minutes to drive there.  In Rhode Island, that qualifies as a road trip all by itself!  (Just some trash talk from a Connecticut native)

It was a beautiful summer day, and the views were gorgeous.  It’s hard to beat a walk along the ocean, especially when it’s a weekday and you don’t have to go to work because you quit your job to drive around in an RV.

We saw these warning signs all over.  We took their meaning to be “Caution:  Do not jump off of the cliff while decapitating yourself,” which really threw our afternoon plans for a loop.

There were a lot of old and pretty houses along the cliff walk, along with a lot of hedges hiding said houses.  We especially enjoyed the the blue and yellow construction wrapping on the house in the picture above, and felt pretty clever for making jokes about an Ikea being built there, until about 3 other groups of people passing by did the same thing.

Maybe they were semi-professional travel jokesters too?  Yeah, most likely that’s what it is.

We still need some work on our selfie aim.

The Fantastic Umbrella Factory

Our final stop in Rhode Island was the Fantastic Umbrella Factory, which confusingly is not a factory and which does not sell umbrellas.  But it is pretty fantastic!  The FUF, as we’ll call it to save a tiny amount of time, is basically a hippie bazaar / petting zoo: it features a great cafe, cool gardens, chickens and rooster and goats and emus, a bamboo forest, and lots of tie-dye.

My Big Lebowski Vitruvian Man shirt totally played at the FUF, which may give you a sense of the kind of place it was.  We also got to see a pretty impressive rooster that seemed to have some peacock in its blood.  The pictures don’t quite do it justice – it sort of looks like it’s getting turned down by the other chickens here, but trust us, this rooster was the cock of the walk.

It’s a pretty small state, so that’s all we’ve got for Rhode Island.  If you’re interested, see below for a few more pictures of the weird and cool world of the Fantastic Umbrella Factory.

What’s next:  Currently, we are in southern Pennsylvania, seeing some friends and hoping to tour Gettysburg tomorrow.  Next up:  friends and fatcats in Washington, D.C.

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Next Post: Week 7: Cape Cod – It’s Gonna Rain

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