Winchester Bay to Brookings, OR 24 Sept 2013

 

 About 30 miles south of Winchester Bay, this is what Hwy 101 looks like.  

 Cranberry bogs are frequent north and south of Coos Bay.  This one has been harvested and is ready for winter.

 Hwy 101 returns to parallel the ocean.  Even in the overcast conditions, it is beautiful.

 Now, how can you not love the southern coast of Oregon?

 Another face of Hwy 101.

 The marine layer combined with cloud overhead, makes the way look wonderfully mystical.

 The highway climbs to give different perspectives of the Pacific.  Because we've lived so long in this part of the world, we've become quite jaded.  We expect, some day, to take these views for granted, but it hasn't happened yet.

 Now we come back to sea level and know that we will soon have more close-ups of the water.

It looks like the rocks are gone.

 Wrong!

This rock captured our imagination.  The jagged edge doesn't look like it was created by erosion.  

 Ah, Gold Beach, OR lies across this bridge.  

 The art deco pillars mark the entrance to the bridge, it is a variation of the other Conde McCullough bridges along Hwy 101.

Looking down from the bridge, we saw lots of fishermen.

Brookings, OR in the rain.  There is a Fred Meyer grocery, Michael's, and a quilt shop that we couldn't find, even with GPS, many restaurants, and homes all over the hills.  There are three state parks.  Brookings is only 3 1/2 miles from the California border and is known to lie in the banana belt due to the mild winters in relationship to the rest of the Pacific Northwest coast.  We could have stayed longer.

The Pelican Bay Lighthouse is located in the private home of Bill Cady.  He received permission from the federal government to light it on July 4, 1999.  We could see this from our RV park.

If you want fancy, this isn't the place for you.  It is a parking lot, but what views!  

This is the view looking south from our RV.  Who needs fancy?  We can shut our blinds at night, listen to the roar of the breakers, and live in our luxury suite knowing that the next day, we have eye candy.

That is a surfer out our windshield.  To the right is the jetty.  We saw commercial fishing and pleasure vessels head out to sea from the harbor behind us.  We will be back.