September 9-12: Brookings, Oregon

September 12, 2012

Elks Lodge, Brookings, Oregon

As always, please feel free to click on any picture to enlarge it...

Another travel day, another easy drive.  We’re really getting the hang of this “short hop” travel mode.  We did some of the travel preparation the night before and finished up in the morning, but took our time.  We didn’t leave Charleston until after 11:00 AM.  This wasn’t an issue since we didn’t have too far to go, just following US-101 south to Brookings.  

It didn’t take too long for the sun to return, and we had a pretty good day for driving.  We fueled up (both the coach and the humans -- lunch) in Port Orford and had some construction between there and Gold Beach.  Nothing held us up, though, and we were soon parked at the Elks Lodge.  We were here last fall, so we knew exactly where to go.

We set out the dog pen and our chairs, and had a chance to have Happy Hour outside for a change.  We were parked next to a maple tree that was already starting to generate foliage, a reminder that autumn is coming.

With nice weather (although a little on the cool side in the low-60s), I got out for a nice walk, about 6 miles from the Elks to Brookings Harbor.  Later in our stay, we took a couple of rides along the coast, both north and south of Brookings.  Of course, it’s not too far south of Brookings to the California border, so we didn’t go far, stopping at Crissey Field State Park.  The beach is littered with debris (none from the Japanese Tsunami that we could see), but the pups had a good time once we climbed over the logs and got to the beach.

The following day, we headed north toward Gold Beach, stopping at numerous overlooks in the Boardman Scenic Corridor.  It was more hazy, so the photos weren’t as interesting, but we had another good day.

It was hard to get back in the swing of cooking after the fabulous crab fest that Wayne and Eva put on, but we did well over the past few days.  Geri tried a new recipe for a no-knead-pizza-dough, and turned out some fantastic pies in our little electric pizza oven.  And, she whipped up a wonderful Couscous with mushrooms and sautéed carrots to go with a pan-seared/oven-finished pork tenderloin.  Sorry; no “food porn” pictures this time...

Tomorrow, we continue south, with a longer drive planned all the way to Eureka, well over 100 miles.  Wow!