Pivot Day 2 - Mike Mulligan and the Trail of Doom

After a good night’s sleep we were ready for our usual camping breakfast of Cacklin’ Oat Bran but NOPE, there is a national COB shortage (there really is, do the research!) and so we had granolas instead. I boiled water for our tea in a large saucepan and we did some looking for hiking trails. I found one called the Mike Miller Educational trail, a mile long loop trail with a brochure explaining Forest Features. It sounded good so we headed out. I even thought to download the brochure before we left in case of lack of signal. After a short detour because of bad signage (go straight, not left, no matter what the sign says) we found the entrance and parked. We looked for brochures in the brochure box but there weren’t any – which was ok because I had one on my phone. Meanwhile Dave kept calling it the Mike Mulligan trail, which was just wrong – it has nothing to do with that. I think he’s been spending too much time with Ben. We happily headed into the woods – it was a beautiful day – and reached signpost number 1, which told us about stabilized sand dunes and wild rhododendron. We continued on, up and down, around and through, stopping at the sign posts and becoming increasingly convinced the writing in the brochure had little or nothing to do with many of the actual places where the signposts were. We didn’t let it bother us (even though we never found the path to signpost 6, which the map showed as a little jaunt off the main trail). It’s classic partially logged forest, although the rhodies were unusual. There are several wooden bridges and when we crossed the second one Dave thought to wonder if there were geocaches on the trail, and not only were there geocaches there was one right there on the bridge, and as if that weren’t enough it was the Bridge of Doom 2 cache – in case you don’t know, “Doom” is the kids’ nickname for Dave. So there we were at his very own cache, and later on we came to the Tunnel of Doom cache. Sadly, we’d missed the Bridge of Doom 1 cache, but it’s always good to save something for the next time. The trail wound around down and over a pond, and then met up with the Emery trail, which we’d seen earlier. We completed the educational information at signpost 14 and were finishing up the walk when without warning we came upon signpost 15. There is no signpost 15 in the brochure… we can never be truly finished…

Our plan was to have an early lunch in Newport, but it wasn’t time yet so we decided to head up to the lighthouse. We got over the bridge at Newport and saw a sign for the lighthouse so we went that way, except it was the wrong lighthouse – we meant to go to the Yaquina Head lighthouse, which is in an Outstanding Natural Area, but instead we ended up at the Yaquina Bay lighthouse in the Yaquina Bay State Recreation Area, which only operated from 1871-1874 and, while neat looking, isn’t open to the public. However there were some picnic areas and a restroom, and then some trails down to the beach, which we happily took. When the boys were on the swim team the Newport meet was always the end of the summer season, and there was always a bonfire on Agate Beach to celebrate on Saturday night. Agate Beach had the most interesting sand waves, and it was always fun climbing around on them. The beach at Yaquina Bay (which is the bay where our oysters at Ona’s came from) had the same waves, and we enjoyed walking through them to get to the hard flat sand by the ocean. We walked out onto the jetty at the south end of the beach and listened to the foghorn and watched the pelicans. Then we headed back, looking for that perfect point to minimize walking over the sand waves. We each took a slightly different path – Dave’s being more direct, mine being flatter/harder sand, but ending up heading in the wrong direction – and then walked on the path up a dune and then down a dune through some meadow and then back UP a lot of stairs to right where our car was parked. And then it was time for lunch.

Lunch was at the Rogue brewery bayfront restaurant in the historic bayfront district, where we got a parking space right across from the restaurant and where they immediately brought us a beer taster once we’d sat down at our table on the sunny, sheltered from the wind patio. We had an absolutely lovely lunch including very much enjoying the Son of Mookie IPA, good for Red Sox and Dodger fans alike.  After lunch we stopped briefly at the trailer and then headed south towards Cape Perpetua, a scenic area in the Siuslaw National Forest. Jen and I had come here when we did our vacation in Florence, but we’d missed high tide, which is when the spouting horn is at its most amazing. So we went at high tide (Dave had been there at high tide before) and the spouting horn is amazing! We also walked out to Thor’s Well, which it turns out is more amazing at a lower tide. On the way down as we drove through Yachats I kept an eye out for the Drift Inn, which is where I was pretty sure Jen and I had lunch when we went to Cape Perpetua, and sure enough there it was – right across the street from Ona’s. One mystery solved – still don’t know about signpost 15. Then it was time to head back to the trailer for some serious recliner time. Dave took a nap and I wrote. Once Dave got up from his nap he connected to the campground cable TV, which is something we’ve never done. There are only 12 channels and none of them are ones we want to watch, but it is fun to have done it.

So we’re staying at the KOA campground, and the longer we stay here the more we like it. It’s very quiet at night, and extraordinarily well taken care of – for example, they rake the gravel in the tent campsites in between occupants. They also have a small store with pretty much everything you forgot to bring or didn’t even know you should bring, like a cowboy coffee pot and a mug with a VW van on it. Once I found out I needed those things I took care of it.

Back to Newport for dinner at Nana’s Irish pub. We got there at 5:30 hoping to avoid the rush, but it turns out the rush was at 5 and everyone was sitting at tables drinking their Irish beers (except for the couple with their Coors Light – hello?) and waiting for their food, which takes 20 minutes from when you order it. We were able to get the last table on the patio after a short wait. Dave had sausages in puff pastry which were delicious, and I had the steak and guinness pie which is covered with puff pastry and baked in a ceramic dish and which is absolutely delicious except even 20 minutes after it arrives it’s STILL too hot to eat even if you immediately eat all the puff pastry off the top to let it begin to cool.  I had a hot toddy for dessert which I’d give a meh+, probably don’t need to get it again. Dave ordered a crisp which eventually they realized they were out of, which was probably just as well, since it meant as soon as I finished my toddy we could get back to the trailer and boil water for tea in our new cowboy coffee pot. Which we did, and then settled in for more recliner time.