Mon 26 – Wed 28 Aug 2019
Heading south from Reedsport down the spectacular coast of Oregon state, we first passed the huge sand dunes of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, 40 miles of large, wind-sculpted sand dunes right next to the sea.
It brought back sharp memories of the last time we were here in the late summer of 2001, when I was hiking and jumping about on a huge, 500 foot high dune near the ocean. We’d been completely out of touch in the Three Sisters Wilderness, Crater Lake and Sawyers Rapids, then gone across to Reedsport, but first driven up the coast to the lighthouse at Heseta Head before heading back south along the coast. Fog rolled in from the sea, continuously curtaining our views. We passed through small towns just north of Reedsport, which we were surprised to see swathed in American flags. We hadn’t seen this anywhere else. “Blimey,” we thought, “They’re a bit on the patriotic side here!”
Mid-morning on that trip, I had spent a few minutes hiking partway up an amazing, expansive, one-step-forward-two-steps-back sand dune near ‘The Dunes Overlook’ just north of Reedsport, leaping off near the top and slithering down the loose sand on my bottom. Just me, no-one else around: Dave was tired, so had stayed in the car and chanced to put the car radio on.
When I returned, he looked solemn. He said something had happened, he wasn’t sure what, but it sounded serious. We kept the radio on for the rest of the day. Confused, confusing, piecemeal information filtered in. Something about a plane crash. Somewhere. America. No, it was more than one crash. Not accidents. The date was 9/11.
The innocence of that morning on the dunes was shattered. By mid-afternoon, we knew that there were at least four crashes, some people were saying six; several planes had gone into buildings in New York and Washington DC, and some buildings had collapsed. (Our continuing travels took us so far off the beaten track that it was a whole year before we saw any footage – we only knew what we could piece together from the car radio.)
We had recently left Washington state and, although Washington DC and Washington state are 2700 miles apart, almost as far apart as Washington DC and the UK, I knew that our parents wouldn’t appreciate the difference nor where we actually were, and would be worrying. We had to find a payphone to ring them, which we finally managed to do at 11 p.m. our time (7 a.m. next day, UK time).
The American flags that we’d been seeing everywhere were explained: it wasn’t an especially patriotic area, but a date when the whole nation needed to show unity. The mood was sombre at the campsites where we stayed for the next few nights. Radio chat shows revealed public sentiment changing from shock to retaliation across less than 24 hours, although there were also many phoning in to say that the USA had felt inviolate and had its own arrogance to blame, even its failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
We felt like impostors being in the country at that time. We were worried about our flights out in less than 3 weeks. We were worried in case the USA went to war whilst we were still there. Our friend was due to fly out from the UK in 4 days’ time and spend a while with us, but had to cancel her plans (another in the list of people who had intended to intercept our travels but didn’t). And I felt sick inside because, all the while, people were still dying trapped under rubble.
Thankfully, our passage down the dunes in 2019 was completely uneventful. In clear, sunny weather, we stopped for flask coffee at Bullards Beach State Park near Bandon, one of the places we camped the last time we came down this coast. We passed Cape Blanco State Park, and Ophir, and the beautiful, hazy, almost mystical, always windswept Nesika Beach, stopping at various viewpoints for incredible coastal views with what looked like turkey vultures circling on the coastal updraughts, as well as another large bird of prey and the ubiquitous, pretty blue jays.
[Use arrows or swipe to scroll photos.] Oregon coastal views with vultures circling on the updraughts.
18 years ago, we’d done a short hike at Cape Blanco to a viewpoint over a nearby reef, the fog finally having rolled further out to sea as an offshore bank. A red helicopter had appeared from nowhere and had us scurrying out of the way as it looked about to land on our heads, before it darted off round the headland and back again to hover at length over the reef. I commented to Dave at the time that it was perhaps a rescue helicopter on a practice. Next day, we heard that the captain of a small boat had previously sent out a ‘mayday’ near the reef, but couldn’t be located in the thick fog. It seemed he had mortally foundered and, in response to a report of debris on the reef, a recovery helicopter had been scrambled – no doubt the one we had encountered.
Again, this time, our trip continued untoward, and we found ourselves approaching Gold Beach at the mouth of the Rogue River – although this too had changed. 18 years ago, large white and black pelicans had been flying round the river mouth. This time, nothing. Maybe it was a seasonal thing. We crossed the river mouth and turned inland (east) along the south side of the Rogue River, our car’s external temperature gauge peaking at 99 deg F (over 37 deg C), the highest temperature so far on this USA trip.
Just past Illahe, we reached the Foster Bar Recreation Area Campground on Foster Creek where it joins the Rogue River right at the edge of the Wild Rogue Wilderness. There might not be too many wild rogues of the human variety these days, but black bears certainly frequent the banks of the river. We were told that the bears don’t usually come into the campground, but took the usual precautions of making sure there were no food or scented items in the tent or unwashed cooking pans or plates left around our pitch.
The campground, rather tricky to find, was once a ranch, now donated to the National Forest Service – so there were vines and apple and plum trees hidden away in the scrub. With only 8 pitches in total, we and a chap called Mark who arrived shortly after us were lucky enough to get the last two available (adjacent) pitches. We paid for a two-night stay and looked forward to the luxury of a drinking water faucet just opposite our tent and, a bit of a walk away across the site, flush toilets and running water in real sinks.
We had barely any firewood left, but the girls were keen to have a small campfire, so scurried around trying to find bits of dead branches that we could burn. On seeing the girls searching, a lovely fellow camper from two pitches away gave them a few pieces of his own firewood, and we got a small but decent fire going (we decided to keep back some of the wood for tomorrow night). We heated water in a few largish, empty chilli and peach cans (that we were carrying around in the car with us, awaiting recycling) so that the girls and I could have lukewarm strip washes in another sarong ‘shower cubicle’ that we rigged up using our washing line supported between three trees.
Unfortunately, I was the last to get washed, the daylight fading rapidly, so had to string up a small torch and hope that our neighbour, Mark, and any passing campers collecting water kept their eyes averted – seeing me backlit by torchlight through an insubstantial sarong curtain would be enough to ruin anyone’s evening!
We enjoyed the last tiny flames of our campfire as we toasted a few marshmallows, listening to the gentle gurgle of Foster Creek beside our tent just before it joined the Rogue River, the soft crackle of the fire and the sound of summer crickets. We watched bats flitting around and a deer appear opposite our tent for a late-evening forage amongst the trees.
Next morning, I got up at 7 a.m. and saw another deer as I walked across to the small facilities block. The temperature soon began to rise, reaching a peak of over 38 degrees C. Whilst everyone else at the campsite spent the day in the shade, relaxing or sleeping, or drove out a few miles in air-conditioned cars to the nearest store selling ice creams, we four set off for an 8 mile walk in the Wild Rogue Wilderness. It was deserted and beautiful, with sightings of vultures and big herons and lots of little, short-tailed lizards. Poppy even managed a distant sighting of a black bear, possibly two, on the far riverbank, although the rest of us weren’t so lucky.
We got back to our car, absolutely parched, having drunk 5 litres of water between us on the walk and guzzled a further 3 litres as soon as we reached the extra supplies at the car. We then went back to the campsite and relaxed, listening to a strange, noisy bird that regularly flew low over the creek behind our tent making an odd noise all the way. I named it the Squealing Creaking Zipwire Bird. I have a way with names.
The girls and I had a cooling dip in the fast-flowing Rogue River, so popular with wilderness white water rafters, but we only went in thigh-deep and ducked under whilst clinging onto rocks so that we weren’t washed away. Our dip negated the need for another strip wash at the tent, but it had come to Dave’s turn. He still hasn’t forgiven me for chatting with our neighbour, Mark, at length, whilst both stood less than 3 metres from where he was stark-naked behind a flimsy sarong.
Mark ‘s manner and smile reminded me of my friend, Simon. Mark used to work for the National Forest Service and said he’s been coming here for relaxation camping and fishing trips with friends and three generations of his family for 20 years. They were due to start arriving from this evening and he said he’d have his eye on our pitch from tomorrow, once we left. I told him they might as well start encroaching right away, our pitch being so huge that it wouldn’t bother us at all. But they must have felt awkward about doing so as they kept completely within Mark’s area and a late arrival even split from their group to spend one night elsewhere on the campsite between another two pitches.
Next morning, we set off promptly so that they could regroup as soon as possible without any danger of someone else arriving first and snaffling our vacated pitch. I smiled quietly to myself when one of Mark’s relatives proudly told us how great the state of Oregon is with recycling. The only thing we’ve seen being recycled are aluminium cans (which we don’t use) and, very occasionally, plastic bottles (which we rarely use). We’ve been carrying round glass, paper, card and food cans for two weeks without being able to recycle them anywhere.
I was rather surprised given Oregon’s apparently green credentials. Washington state to the north recycles more than Oregon and California to the south turned out to recycle more than Washington. Mark’s relative was comparing Oregon to Memphis in Tennessee, which apparently has no recycling programme at all, so that might explain the rose-tinted perspective.
It was time for us to head back out to the west coast of the USA and continue south into California. We had enjoyed Washington and Oregon so much that we had allowed ourselves only two days to reach San Francisco, from where we had a flight booked back home to the UK.