Team Norris: Oregon Dunes, 2009

A few weeks ago, Molly, me, Josh Y. and Lindsey all went to the Oregon Dunes. These are located on the southern-middle coast of Oregon. Most of the Oregon coast is very rocky, and doesn't have much sand. This particular area has a lot of sand, and it blows inland creating very large dunes. Needless to say, this is a very unusual sight admist groves of large pine trees.

Molly and I drove down on a Thursday evening and set up camp. It was very dark when we arrived and had to leave the car lights on to set up the tent. Unfortunately we did not remember to leave the car running as we did this, and after about 10 minutes with the high-beams on, the car battery went dead. Luckily we had the tent up at that point, so we called Lindsey and Josh and ask them to grab some jumper cables before they left to join us the next morning.

Our campsite was literally a 3 minute walk from the dunes. We had some foresight and had packed a bottle of cheap champagne. We grabbed it and a beach blanket and headed to the dunes. We climbed to the top of the nearest large one, popped the cork and enjoyed the moon and stars with the salty smell of the ocean. Once the clouds started to roll in and the champagne bottle was empty, we headed back to camp and went to bed.

The next morning we were greeted to rain.... lots of it. We had expected to get up and explore the dunes for awhile while waiting for Team Yellison to arrive... but with the rain and our dead car we were pretty much stuck. We ate breakfast in the car and prepared for a long wait, as we didn't expect them until about 1pm (it was 9AM). After awhile I remembered that I have a AAA premier membership that I have been paying dues on for like 5 years and haven't ever used. I gave them a call and within 2 hours we had our car jumpstarted. Nearly 10 minutes later, Josh and Linsdey called and told us that they were about 20 minutes away. We drove to meet them and pondered what to do with our day. We eventually decided that lunch and a Movie were in order, and found a nice place in North Bend that had excellent milkshakes and fries. Afterward we saw Julie and Julia, a good, yet forgettable movie. By this time the rain had cleared up, so we headed back to camp to play in the dunes for a little while, play Farkle and get dinner started. We had a second bottle of Champagne, so we did the dune-moon-wine thing a second night.

The next morning was beautiful. We got up early to go visit the Sea Lion caves north of Florence, OR. This is apparently the largest coastal cave by some metric (in Oregon... in the US, in the World... in private ownership? who knows). It is famous because it is generally full of very stinky and loud sea lions. At this time there were none there, so we decided not to spend the $12 to see no sea lions. We, instead, went to a local lighthouse with great views... and a boring tour. There was an older lady and her daughter on the tour with us... both very obese and more than willing to share very personal information with everyone. It made the tour too interesting.

After the tour we went back to the campsite for the big dune hike: from the campground to the ocean! The pictures pretty much speak for themselves, but it was very beautful and involved many different micro-climates.

That evening we played Farkle, ate a nice dinner and sat around the campfire until it was bedtime. The next morning we packed up camp and drove to the Oregon State Fair!

The fair was not great. There were some interesting things to see... but all-in-all the food selections were sub-par. We did try the deep-fried oreos and deep-fried snickers bars. Other things tried were corn-on-the-cob, loaded baked potato, corn dog, Australian potaotes, funnel cake, ice-cream, sausages, onion rings, carmel apples and others.

We got back home on sunday, full, tired and ready for bed.

Enjoy the pictures!