Florence, OR to Newport Beach…

The Siuslaw River (sy-YEW-slaw) is adjacent to a little gem of a park near Florence Oregon, Harbor Vista, a Lane County Park.  It sits along the coast where some site have views of the river and the coastal shoreline on  the other side of the river. For those of you who have not been in this part of Oregon the water is cold… no I mean real COLD!!! The ocean here is in the mid 50 degrees F,so needless to say most people here are in shorts with sweatshirts, hoodies or jackets!

Harbor Vista park is a small park and some of the sites, including ours, are very tight. There is no sewer and they only have 30 AMPS but for $25 per night it is bargain along the Oregon coast. It was a whopping 60 miles or so over here from Eugene and the state road 126 we took was not too bad but is in need of resurfacing. We will stay here until Friday and then we will hope to be able to find a place to stay not too far away south of here for the weekend.

Monday we drove north to Newport to see the famed tsunami dock that floated in from Japan. It is supposed to be torn apart and removed from Agate Beach this week so I thought it would be interesting to see it  before they destroyed it. My thoughts were that the state of Oregon should have left it there and put up a memorial nearby to acknowledge the thousands who perished in the tsunami. Ahhh, but instead they will spend countless dollars to tear it apart and haul it off… A portion will be saved for a memorial somewhere.

The 50 mile drive north to Newport and back on highway 101 was a treat as expected. Each bend of the road revealed yet another postcard view along the Oregon coast. We passed through several small towns with small ports that showed the signs of former fishing villages that morphed into tourist towns over time. We stopped at many pullouts and were treated to wonderfully scenic coastline views and even spotted several whale spouts out in the Pacific. Large rocky land masses were slowly being taken over by the ocean and populated by pigeon guillemots and lots of gulls… but no buoys!

Heading back into the town of Florence we stopped in “old town” and checked out the local flair… nice little town that is a bit more touristy than I like but that is to be expected as we travel south on highway 101.