A Visit from Family...

June 6, 2013

Tahkenitch Landing Campground

Gardiner, OR

I had a special visitor yesterday.  My son Sean, who lives and works near Port Angeles, WA, drove down to visit me for a day.  He is the Sous Chef/Chef de Cuisine for the Lake Crescent Lodge in the Olympic National Park.  He has the same days off this week as I have so he drove down to visit yesterday.  We haven’t seen each other since last November and it was certainly pleasant to spend some time with him.  Unfortunately, he had to leave about an hour ago to drive back to Lake Crescent.  And it is about an eight hour drive.  It was most fun, but way too short a visit.

He had not been in this area before, so I gave him the dollar tour.  We drove down by Winchester Bay, about six miles south of Reedsport, OR, to show him some of the Dunes, up close and personal.  We drove out the Umpqua Beach #3 Dune camping area.  This is a somewhat developed parking/picnicking area about 5 miles south of Winchester Bay, nestled in between the ocean

and the Dunes.  There are about 50 Dune camping sites along this stretch…no water, no electricity, just sand on which to park your camper or tent.  Today the wind was fairly fierce.  I would not have wanted to camp anywhere close with all the sand and dust blowing around.  To provide you with a sense of the scale, the Dunes in these pictures are about a half mile away (or more) and probably rise to between 200 and 400 feet.  The greenery you see on the Dunes is fully grown pine trees.

On the return from the beach area, we drove up to the Upqua Light House.  The Light House is an operating Light House that still shines out to sea to assist boats and ships approaching the coast.  It sits on the bluff, overlooking the entrance from the Pacific Ocean to the Umpqua River.  The surf today, at the entrance to the river, was fairly mild.  I have seen some days where the curls of the waves at the entrance were as high as the jetty protecting the mouth of the river.  Wind was up today but apparently blowing in the right direction to less the impact of the river flowing out to meet the ocean trying to flow in.  The Umpqua Light has been around for quite a while, and according to the sign out front, was the first light on the Oregon Coast.

Insert pictures of Light house and view…

While driving back through Reedsport, we stopped for a visit to the Reedsport Skate Park.  This is a rather elaborate skateboard/skate/bicycle park with both Street and Vert areas to skate.  For those of you with no knowledge of the terms Street or Vert(icle) types of skating/skateboarding, look at the pictures and you can probably discern the different portions of the park.  

The Vert sections are like swimming pool depressions that allow the skateboarders to drop down into the bowls and make jumps or ride the interiors of the bowls.  The Street skateboarders use the flat areas around the rim of the park for conducting the tricks with the skateboard.  Notice that there are some rails, a bench or two, a handrail down the steps, the steps (to jump down or up), the ramps with the metal edges for sliding along with the skateboard.  This park is a very elaborate and extensive park.  Sean has been skateboarding since he was about eight and enjoyed the tour of the park.  The big circular ramp, that looks like a bridge is used by the skaters/skateboarders to ride both the inside tube and the outside ramp down into the bowls.  A good skateboarder (or maybe a little crazy skateboarder) can actually do an entire loop around the inside of the tube.  I have seen it done, but they were very, very good.

On the drive back north to the campground, we turned off and stopped about three miles south of the Tahkenitch Landing, on FiveMile Rd so that Sean could get another view of Tahkenitch Lake.  The lake is not very wide but is extensive.  There are three or four major arms of the lake with another half dozen minor arms.  With 25+ miles of shoreline, the lake seems to go on for a long time.  There are railroad tracks that span most of the lake with five trestles winding their way from the south to the north.  I can see one from the boat launch area of the campground.  The one in the picture is another.  One of these days, I am going to find a way to get a tour of the lake.

So Sean has left for the great North Woods and I am here in Irv, looking out the window at the lake and I miss him already.  I am going to try and go visit him if I can in the next few weeks.  But now I have to run an errand to Roseburg, OR, to return something that I bought for Irv, but don’t need anymore. 

If you have any questions, or would like to know more about my summer,  leave a comment, ask a question, let me know what you think.

Until next time…