Drive to Sunset Bay State Park
By scheduling 7 days in Lincoln City, I had hoped that we would have two good days of shooting at Cape Perpetua (Thors Well) and two at Cape Kiwanda. But the weather thwarted us again. We tried a second day in the Cape Perpetua area (Haceta Head Lighthouse) yesterday, and there was no hope of a second day at Cape Kiwanda. We ran out of time today, and we started our drive south. The first half of today's drive was a repeat of yesterday except for the limitations of driving the motorhome and towing the Explorer. Needless to say, we made no sightseeing stops.
It was a gorgeous but slow drive on Highway 101 from Lincoln City to Coos Bay. The area around Cape Perpetua is some of the most rugged coastal scenery on Central Oregon Coast. That was followed by the sand dunes and fresh-water chain lakes around Florence. And then we reached Sunset Bay State Park. The campground is in a deep valley with ridges a couple of hundred feet high on both sides. And the ridges are a solid wall of Douglas firs, intermixed with a coastal relative of the lodgepole pine. We're camping in our own little world. The only downside is that it's so isolated that we have no Internet service. We have to drive out of the campground and south to one of the turnouts to get any Internet coverage.
We drove the Cape Arago Road toward Shore Acres, Simpson Reef, and Drake Point in the early evening. We took a few photos at the turnout for the view to the Cape Arago Lighthouse, but by the time we had reached Simpson Reef, the clouds had overwhelmed the blue sky again and we had nothing but gray. We're still waiting for our first good sunset of the trip.
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