Day 40, Monday, October 13, Cape Lookout State Park, Oregon Pacific, 5982 miles
I got up before the crack of dawn so i could get an early start on the road. To get to the Redwoods by Tuesday night, i need to make about 270 miles today. Instead of planning where i want to spend the night, i decided that tonight would be a bivouac night, i.e., camp at the first place that comes along wherever we happen to be when it is time to call it a day. This method is somewhat risky and stressful, but sometimes it has to be done since there is no telling what the drive will be like. Got on the road at 9:30., although i was sad to be leaving this pleasant camp and camp site, but the road beckoned.
The drive through Olympic National Park and Forest was rather pleasant. Very little traffic, although in the summer my guess it is crawling with vehicles. A few pleasant towns along the way, especially getting into Oregon, but no time to stop and explore them. At 4:00, i realized i was not making very good time on the road. Whereas usually i average 50 miles an hour with rest stops for Erde, gas stops, grocery stops, and the like, i was making abiut 35 today. So at 4:00 i pulled over at Tillamook, pulled out the maps and AAA camping book, and started plannjng my bivouac for the night.
There was a primitive Natioanl Forest camp 23 miles to the west of Timmamook, but, i figured, why drive 23 mikes west, 46 back and forth, when i could probabky find something down the line for the same distance. The next town up, Ckearwater, had only RV camps, so i ignored that. The next town up, Pacific City, 33 miles down the road, listed another primitive National Forest camp, Siuslaw, just 8 miles from the center of town, so that's where we headed. Even at 4:15, the sky was dark with the clouds and the rain was falling. Great, i figured, we'd be settled in our cozy camp by 5:00 before dark and the heavy rains, which were expected.
As it turns out, Pacific City was not on 101 but west about 3 miles. No big deal, i thought, what's three more miles? But when i got to the center of town, no one there knew where CR-871 was, which the AAA book said to take from the center of town. In fact, i could not find a souk who ever heard of the camp or that National Forest. It was like Brigadoon all over again. With daylight rapidly disappearing, the rain getting heavier, and with my not having passed another camp on the route down there, i said that i had no choice but to find the camp on my own. When one e route i took brought me right back to 101, but 20 mikes to the north, i realized that i should have taken a left at the one meaningful intersection i came to and not a right, so back to thar intersection i headed, and then headed in the direction of the ocean. About five mikes up the road, i came to some signs for camps, but not to Siuslaw. The sign pointed right to Whalen Island Country Park and Cape Lookout State Park. So I kissed Siuslaw good bye and headed right.
About 20 minutes up the ever darkening road, with the rain coming down heavier, i came to the entrance for Whalen Island camp, a pleasant looking place. When i knocked on the host's RV door asking about a vacancy (the place was empty) he told me they had some, but they are more expensive than Cape Lookout up the road 20 minutes. My better judgment told me to stay put and pay few extra bucks and get this potentially ugly night over with, but when he saw Erde in thr Defender, he told me it would cost me $5.00 more for the dog, $32 in total. "You have a lovely camp here," i told him, "but i think i'd like some more ocean views," and hopped into the Defender and left. Twenty minutes up the road, at about 6, with no usuabke daylight left, we came to the road for Cape Lookout, a wonderful road to take if your have bright sun, have been down the road before and are not in a hurry, none of which applied to me now.
About 15 minutes later, we came to the camp entrance, and i immediately make haste to get to the dunes area and find a site suitable for pitching a tent in the rain, make that rain, wind, cold and dark, at that point. Over the next hour, fighting all four of those elements, we got the camp set up without anything, especially Erde, getting wet. The tent went up first, then my improved tarping, which did a wonderful job of protecting everything from getting wet as we went about our usual evening chores, once we got it up to stay up with the heavy winds whipping it like a sail and ripping the stakes right out of the earth. I find that when one is faced with these adverse conditions, what helps most is a heavy dose of cursing.
Erde had her usual dinner, and, as usual, refused to eat all of it. Since there was no way i could keep my stove lit in that wind, i settled for a V8 juice and Erde's leftover salmon, which was fine with me.
By the way, the worst thing about setting up camp in these conditions is not the rain, wind or cold. It's the dark. Try walking around your dark home at night with the only light coming from a 17-lumen headlight and you will see what i mean. It is disorienting, especially since 100 percent of the time you have to look at your feet to make sure you do not trip over anything in this new location.
Settled into the tent after two hours of what can only be described as agony, i opened my iPad to see if i had internet connection to send this posting, and i did. My mail came up first, and there i found a nice comment from someone on my blog, "I am glad you are having such a wonderful time, Ed." Sure am, anon.
The truth is that once you get settled into your cozy tent for the night after going through what I had just gone through, actually you are having a wonderful time, but only starting at that moment and not a moment before.
For the rest of the evening that I was awake, the rain came down in buckets and the wind whipped the tent and the nearby tarp into a frenzy. And the sound of the ocean wasn't just the pleasant sound of one wave after another crashing on the shore that are popular with meditation CD The sound was a very loud and increasingly louder steady roar, kind of like the sound you would hear if you set your head down next to a train track as a 100-car train went by, or the sound of 100 RV generators in the camp site next to yours. I recalled seeing some Tsunami Hazard Zone signs on the road on the way to the camp, and only hoped that they also had early warning system. I never imagined that an ocean could roar like it did then.
Despite the pelting rain, whipping wind and roaring ocean, the two of us slept like dogs the whole night. I had no idea at all what was on the other side of the dunes just in front of us, but would leave that to tomorrow. I also had no idea what the strange noise was that i heard coming from my Defender. i suspected it was just the sound that straining tarp poles make when buffeted by strong winds. I was in no hurry to get out there in that rain to find out, though. Whatever the situation is in the morning, I will deal with it then.
As i retired for the night, i reminisced about the other terrible nights i had on the road: the terrible electrical storm Sonntag and I got caught in in Winnipeg in 2000: the night in the Canadian Arctic back in 2001 when four-month old Leben starting limping badly when we were 900 miles and five days from a vet; the cold stormy night in 2002 when the Defender's electrical system broke down on an isolated peninsula in Newfoundland; the night in 2011 when i had to sleep wrapped in a tarp on the open, wet, cold deck of a cargo ship in the middle of a storm because they would not let dogs inside; the night in Norther Ontario in 2012 when Leben became paralyzed; the night last year when I sliced my leg open after tripping over a fire pit in a camp site in Alberta, or the cold, windy night we had to sleep in the Defender because the camp site we intended to stay in was crawling with grizzlies. After reminiscing about these terrible nights, and others, i realized that they are only terrible until the terrible things end, which they often do. It's at that point that the wonderful time begins. It's like when people ask if i am having fun on these trips. The answer is, of course not, the fun begins when we get back home to talk about them.
My improved tarping. Still a couple of wrinkles to iron out, but i am getting there.
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