Up the West Coast - Day 7 - 8/29/12 - Gold Beach, OR to Eugene, OR

 After a quick breakfast it was time to hit the road again. We crossed the Rogue River and headed up I-101. Along the way we stopped a few times if there was a good viewing place of the coast. As I've said before, Oregon's coast is gorgeous, full of rocks and cliffs and sandy beaches. But the water if cold, even in the summer.

View from Humbug Mountain State Park

View from Humbug Mountain State Park

View from Humbug Mountain State Park, Port Orford in the distande

We stopped at Port Orford Heads State Park. They had a good viewing area where there used to be a coast guard lifeboat station. I'm not sure if they still have a station there, the buildings were closed but they did have a small museum area with an old coast guard boat.

Coast Guard Lifeboat at Port Orford Heads State Park

View from  Port Orford Heads State Park from the Tower Trail Site

Battle Rock at Port Orford

From there we headed to Cape Blanco Lighthouse. It is still a working lighthouse, but has a small museum area and it is open for tours. It is probably one of the least expensive places to go and see, since it cost only $2 per person. They explained about the origins of it and people who worked there first and then we got to climb up to the top, where there was another person to explain about the light. It is surprising how little the actual light-bulb is and how much light it gives. The people who were on the top before us had seen some whales from there, but I was not able to see them from there. Jeff saw couple far away. So after we went down and started to drive away, we pulled over to a lookout in the park and were able to see about three or four of them. They were far away and hard to see. All we really saw was the water spouts they spew out and a little bit of their backs. But whales we saw anyway.

Cape Blanco Lighthouse

View from the lighthouse grounds towards north-northeast

View from the lighthouse towards south west

The lens of Cape Blanco Lighthouse

Jeff going down from the top of the lighthouse

There is at least one whale spouting water in the middle
bottom part of the picture, that little speck of white.
And the rock in the middle looks a bit like a whale too ;)

Our lunch was this place that Jeff found out, Cafe Mediterranean in North Bend. It was featured in one of Rachel Ray Show's episodes. We both had Lamb Shawerma. It was pretty good, but nothing really special. I think we were both a bit disappointed, I guess we thought that if it was featured in a show the food would be extraordinary.

Cafe Mediterranean

Lamb Shawerma

After lunch we crossed Coos Bay on the Conde McCullough Memorial Bridge. On the other side there were lots of sand dunes, but it was a bit foggy so we didn't get any good pictures of them. Once we reached Florence it was time to head inland. We took route 126 over the Coastal Range to Eugene. We stayed at the Holiday Inn Express on the Springfield Eugene border. The hotel upgraded our room to a small suite with a living area and a small kitchenette. It was actually really nice. 

Conde McCullough Memorial Bridge in
North Bend, Oregon

One of the sand dunes

At a gas station going over the Coastal Range

Going through the Coast Range

Going over the Coastal Range

Since Jeff's computer, (I didn't take mine with me), was so slow that it ended up driving at least me crazy, we ended up going to Best Buy and getting more memory. It seemed to work so much faster after that. Not that I got a chance to do this blog more than once or twice during the trip. (Most of this is done at home about a week later). We had our dinner at the Hop Valley Brewing Co.,which was next door. The place seemed to be very popular with the locals also, it was packed. The food was good and their beer was very nice too. We also noticed a big difference in temperatures in the valley. It was quite cool along the coast, but the valley was much warmer.

Hop Valley Brewing, next door to our hotel

Our upgraded hotel suite