If we pay for a motel, we like to get our time’s money worth. Check out time was 11, but we checked out early at 10:45. The big win for us today was to be able to send our winter gear home. Alice sent us our summer quilts along with food and we sent back our heavy sleeping bags, long underwear, and microspikes. We each reduced our pack weight by over 4 pounds.
Coming into town, the Post Office was the first stop and someplace to have breakfast was the second. The manager of the Sea Crest had recommended Mr Ed’s Expresso & Juice and Underground Bar to us. This is a great local spot. Everybody who’s anybody in Port Orford comes in there. We met the entire town here (really, well over 10 people in a town of 50—these are the movers and shakers in town, possibly from too much caffeine).
One couple took an interest in us and our packs. Not too many hikers make it this far up the main drag. We were almost 7 blocks from the coast well into “biker territory.” We talked for quite a while about where we were heading today. I felt a genuine interest and not just a casual serial killer scoping potential victims. We had already slept through low tide so crossing the Elk River would have to wait until tomorrow. They told us to go check out the Port Orford Heads State Park and just plan on camping on the beach by the Elk River. That would make today less than 10 miles which sounded nice to me.
One of the reasons we headed out to the coast was to actually see and enjoy it. Frankly, road walking isn’t cutting it for us. We’re leaning more toward catching rides around the long road walks which should give us more time to enjoy the gems along the way. The Lifeboat Station Museum and the park itself were well worth the diversion. This was a manned Coast Guard Station until after the Vietnam Nam war when it became more cost effective to perform sea rescues with helicopters rather than manned boats.
There was an abundance of wildlife in the park ranging from seals, to deer, to sea birds. The docents warned us about the beach we were planning to walk this afternoon and said we might wish to reconsider. Why? The Port Orford Heads protects the beach from storms approaching from the southwest. This sounded good to us, but they explained the sand doesn’t get the beating that most coastal sands do so it’s much courser and doesn’t compact. That didn’t sound too bad to us, so we headed on down.
I never thought I’d wish to walk on snow again, but today was the day. The second we hit the beach, we sunk in 6-8”. We tried walking in the surf…no better. We tried walking in the dunes behind…no better, plus we were getting cut up by the grasses. We tried taking off our boots and using our crocs…no good. The little pebbles that are sand on this beach got in the crocs and were painful. Next we tried barefoot. A bust as well. Too hot and burned our feet if we walked above the water line, plus we still sank down just as much. We tried walking in the surf with the same results. In all, we spent an hour and a quarter to go right at a mile. I couldn’t see doing two days of this. Plus, the further we went north, the further we got from 101. You can imagine how bad it was if we weren’t wanting to get too far away from 101.
We made it to Paradise Point Recreation Area and decided to call it quits. In the end, we looped all the way around back into Port Orford where we managed to catch the last bus to Bandon. This was just as good as a hitch since we were the only ones on board. The driver asked us where we were trying to get to and even drove us all the way to the entrance of the Bullard Beach State Park to drop us off.
The first thing visitors see when entering the state park is a yurt city. Durham had told us he managed to rent a yurt at Harris Beach outside of Brookings. They looked cute and Bunny gave me her big doe eyes saying she might cook ME breakfast sometime on the trail. How could I refuse such an obvious empty promise. We were able to get a yurt for one night and then we’d have to stay in Hike and Bike for another night. It’s pretty obvious to us that what we are doing now can no longer be considered “hiking the coast.” We empty our bowels whenever we feel like it. We hitch hike. We are hippies on the Oregon Coast. I cut my hair too soon on this trip.
EFG
You may now apply for membership as one of the “Yurt People”. Then if you can survive Bernie’s initiation ritual (which involves breaking trail thru 18 inches of fresh powder by dimming headlamp light and arriving at your destination 2 or 3 hours after dark), you can become a full fledged member of “Bernie’s Yurt People”, and enjoy all the rights and privileges that you can handle. (Be careful what you wish for, though).
Membership has its privileges. I think we can finish the task.