Lincoln City, Oregon--July 15-18, 2008

Our site at Coyote Rock RV Park is next to the water so we have been enjoying the Siletz River. Because we are near the coast, the temperatures have once again cooled. Days are nice after about 11 a.m. and stay warm until close to sunset around 8:30 p.m. Joyce tried her hand at fishing one morning. She didn't think her line would hold one of the fish that are caught in the area, but she didn't have to worry--she only caught some sculpin (very small, ugly fish).

We used Coyote Rock as our base for exploring the coast from Lincoln City south to Newport (we stayed there about a month ago). Geocaching has been our main means of finding and exploring new places.Yes, there was a geocache hidden behind the sign.

One stop was at Devil's Boil overlook. The water was pretty calm that day.

Tide pools area always interesting. We continued on to Depoe Bay on Wednesday. There were several caches hidden around town. One was near this bench used by whale watchers.
Here we are looking back at the bench. Depoe Bay has the distinction of being the world's smallest harbor.

And here it is!

It is also a whale watching center. We saw a gray whale swimming in circles near the rocks. It occasionally came up for air and once it blew a spout for us. We couldn't get a picture.

We ate lunch in a restaurant overlooking the ocean. As we waited for our food, we read a local paper which advertised a kayak/canoe trip through the Siletz National Wildlife Refuge on Thursday. When we returned to the rv Joyce called and reserved 2 spots for us on the kayak trip.

Amy and Mackenzie were our leaders on the trip. Both are Americorps Volunteers. Our group had about 15 people and many were inexperienced canoers.

We enjoyed kayaking the sloughs (slews) near the Siletz River.

The last one we traveled through was very windy so we got an excellent upper body workout.

We plan to kayak again Sunday.

Friday we drove north to the Tanger Outlet Mall to check it out--just like any other outlet mall only this one had the Billy Mays' Potato Gloves. Bob still won't tell me why he got so tickled (laughed uncontrollably) during the tv commercial we saw at the beginning of our trip. He still gets so tickled he can't talk--maybe one day soon he'll let me in on the secret!

From the mall we drove back toward our campground, but turned on Forest Service Road 17 to go see Drift Creek Falls. We had to travel 10 miles on a single lane mountain road to get to the trailhead. We passed several cars traveling the other way. We were surprised to see a full parking lot at the trailhead. It was worth the trip. The trail is about 1.5 miles long. There is a 240 ft. long suspension bridge 100 feet above the falls.

Once you cross the bridge the trail continues to the base of the falls where you can see the falls with the bridge in the background.
The white line in the front of this picture is a reflection of the falls!The waterbugs were making weird shadows on the rocks below them.

We enjoyed the tranquility of the falls, but the area was crowded so we didn't stay long before hiking back to the trailhead.

The fair is in Newport this weekend so we plan to check it out Saturday.

For those of you who like to crunch numbers, here are some interesting tidbits for you:

Number of days on the road: 249

Gas: $5214.13

Campgrounds: $2266.45

Food: $3135.66

Sightseeing: $343.50

Average cost per day: $68.53

Our plan is to keep our average cost below $75 a day--so far so good!