We did find two nights at the second Elk’s Club in town, so we stayed in Florence a total of four days. That gave us some time for sightseeing in the area.
This is actually the way I know I am getting near the coast – moss everywhere on the trees! Even the stones grow heavy lichen/moss layers in this humidity and mild climate.
One of my favorite spots is Thor’s Well. It is a circular depression that fills with water from the waves, then the water bursts up before disappearing completely. The picture below shows it in the center of the shoreline.
There is a pretty solid wind that comes in from the Pacific that has sculpted these streets so they are tilted, not straight.
And then there is the marine layer that shows up most mornings.
And we saw a black bear! It was crossed the road without warning and we only caught a glimpse of it with our dash cam. This is a screen capture from a long distance away.
We then got to the rally, held at the Coos Bay Mill RV Park . It is associated with a casino, but the campground is right on the bay. This bulk cargo ship was headed farther inland to fill up with wood chips. The chips are transported to Asia and made into paper. You can see one tow/tender at the stern and another small one on the starboard bow.
A rally is always a busy time, so not really any pictures from that. We had a great time though! Very good technical presentations, fun at meals and games, and just an all-around good time getting to visit with old friends and make some new ones. We left this morning (Friday, 9 August), and decided to stay closer to the coast while we could. We find a decent spot at the downtown Elks Lodge in Florence again. It is noisy from traffic, but the sites are adequate with water and electricity. We will fill up our fresh water tank before we leave Sunday morning, and we have identified a few spots to dump the waste tanks before we get to Redmond since the Expo Center doesn’t have a dump station.
I also did get a bunch more kits cut out for my class so I will have a good collection for the students to choose from. Now I have to get serious with writing the instructions out and doing a partial construction one.
My next post will probably be from Redmond next week unless something cool happens unexpectedly.