Home in Canby

 After two night at South Beach State Park we traveled Hwy 101 north, stopping at Mo's in Lincoln City for some fish and chips.  Arrived back home about 4:00.  Decided that we had three months to unload so we just emptied the frig, unloaded our Cpaps and just relaxed.  The boys seemed to be excited at being in a house again.  "So much room to run around !"  

  The next day was a blur of activity. Many loads of laundry.  It is so nice to have a separate laundry room so that the piles stay there.  I remember having the laundry out in the garage.  Better than in a hallway or the kitchen . We opened the big slide and to help with the unload and then shampooed the carpet.  After two months at the damp and foggy coast with two dogs, it was needed. 

   The next day I put the trailer into it's space next to the garage.  There is enough room to to open the slide in the bedroom and kitchen.  The big one (living room) can opened about 60% to get to several of the cabinets if needed.  More unloading, closets and the "basement".  Boring stuff for sure. 

  It's nice having a home base.  I like our house.  We will be here until just after Thanksgiving.  But when we do come home there is always work to be done to get the place looking good again.  The sprinkler system did it's job.  The flowers look pretty good.  They need some trimming and cutting but good.  The yard is green, but the weeds are trying to take over.  More work to come.

  Anyway, Randa and I are now residents of Canby.  Living in a three bedroom house like normal folks do.  Sitting in our recliners at night watching movies or HGTV with the boys sleeping nearby.  Pretty much the same as we do when we are in the RV.   Life is good.

Remembering

  

Wednesday Aug 31, 2022

 Our last day on the coast and we are going to make the most of it.   We will be leaving South Beach State Park after two pleasant nights.  Considering the number of rigs camping in this place, it's is a pretty nice facility.  There are plenty of trails and beach to visit and walk on and the Newport area is full of attractions.  

    We will start by visiting the Newport Bay Aquarium.  Photos to follow.  !  

More Umpqua Lighthouse photos

Randa took a better photo than I did. These are hers.  Notice the Coast Guard residences nearby.

The road goes right by the site so access is far better than Blanco

This photo shows the early bulbs used in the lighthouse.  The latest bulbs are the size of your thumb  

and 1000 watts.  How long will it be until the ones here at Umpqua are swapped for LED like Blanco ?

 

 

One of the portals on the trails at Cape Blanco.  

Monday 29 Aug revision

 Today we pulled out of our spot at Blanco.  It was a bitter-sweet time.  It was a good experience and we felt that we contributed to the visitors education.  Not being able to show them the light, was an unfortunate part.  The lens is spectacular.  But it was time to move on.  We were starting to grow tired of the wind.

  So we headed north just a little before 10.  We stopped at Fred Meyer for some groceries.  Then our next stop was the Umpqua Lighthouse near Winchester.  It was great fun to take the tour and compare it to Blanco.  Tour participants get to go up three steps an stick our upper body into the inside of the light.  WOW ! There are pluses and minuses to each tour. 

Notice the colors.  The "signature" of this light is "White-White-Red"  As you can see from the pattern the is close together.  Rapid repetition of beams.  This shows that Umpqua is a welcoming light .  Blanco's signature is a flash, then 18 seconds of dark, repeat.  Blanco is a "Stay Away " light.

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Randa and I are going to check out the possibility of volunteering at Umpqua for a change of scenery.

Sorry for the lousy photo.

Blacklock Point

 Tuesday we drove to the Blacklock Airport which was established by the Navy during WW II.  We parked there and walked a bit over a mile out to the next point north of Cape Blanco.  From there we had a great but distant view of the lighthouse.  After taking about a dozen photos I finally got a shot of the lighthouse during it's flash.

It was one of those, "Oh my what a beautiful  day" day at the coast.  The sky was blue, blue.  The Pacific was green.  The view spectacular.  The wind was....windy.

It was truly a good day.

Getting close to packing up time

 The volunteer stints at the Oregon State Parks last from the first day to the last day.  They expect you to be packed up and gone by noon on the 1st of the month so that the next volunteer can get in and get set up..  The way our schedule is this month our last work day is Sunday, August 28 .  Monday and Tuesday are normal days off and and Wednesday is our scheduled day off so it works out that we can leave early.  So our plans are to pull out of the campsite on Monday morning and work our way north.  We have two nights reserved at South Beach SP just south of Newport so we can stop along the way as we want to.  I would have preferred to stay another night but there weren't any sites that were open for three nights.  So we will head on home on the 31st .

  Randa and I are ready to be home for a while.  We have had a great experience, again , here and the cape but we are ready.  I don't remember having so many days of fog.  Having sunny days makes us happy.  So many days of little or no winds to move the fog.  We have had the heat on every day since we arrived on July 30th.  

   The park has changed as too.  Well not so much the park as the lighthouse experience.  The road out to the lighthouse is closed to the public.  The road has deteriorated and it shows some signs of sluffing off in several areas, so the decision was made to restrict traffic to employees and volunteers only.  The public must now park at the headlands and walk the 1/2 mile out to the site.  Of course this limits the access to some folks.

   In addition, the lighthouse tower access has been cutoff.  There are several bricks in the tower structure that need to be examined by an engineer to determine if the stairway is safe for visitors to climb.  Seeing the light and lens from the tower was the highlight of the visit to the lighthouse.  It is so disappointing to tell our guests that they can no longer go up to the top.

    Joe, the park superintendent , told me that through a grant, both the road and the tower are going to be examined to determine if either of the problems are fixable.  I have my fingers crossed but fear the worst. The are two fault lines that cross the isthmus making it vulnerable to further damage.  Some day the site may become an island.

A photo of visitors in 1871