We found a trailhead on Hill Lake right next to some of the dunes. We really wanted to check out the dunes some, we stopped there and went for a hike. It was super fun. We didn't really follow the trail. We went up in the dunes and walked around quite a bit.
From there we decided to head towards Cape Arago and the state parks there. We stopped at a sushi place in North Bend that was excellent. Once we got out to the coast again, we found a County Park that is relatively cheap, has showers (we were full of sand) and is pretty close to some decent surf. Not only that, we have good internet. :D We may stay here a few nights. We'll see.
-Miranda
Curly, Pickles and Zoe looking out the window. Lucy was there earlier but of course I didn't have my camera ready.
Our footprints up the sand dune.
Me walking along the sand dunes.
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We ended up not having any issues that night. We woke up and headed to a gas station. Fortunately it was a larger station, so plenty of room for us to just park. We stayed there for a bit and worked until lunch. For lunch, we stopped at a yummy Indian buffet. After, we decided to pick up a few things from Petco. It turned out that a Verizon store was in the same area, so Joe went to go check out their plans and see if what they have would work for us. He had learned earlier that apparently when Sprint is roaming, it's typically on Verizon's network. Since we use Sprint roaming quite a bit, it makes sense to try out Verizon.
We ended up getting a global broadband card. Then we'll be able to use it when/if we do some global travel soon, which we are hoping to do. He tried it in the parking lot and it worked great!
Our next stop was to the vet. The whole reason we came to Corvallis. The vet was very nice. She said that it was an odd showing of a Herpes virus, or something along those lines. Apparently all cats are basically exposed to it at some point, it's just what their body does with it. Something must of stressed her out to the point that this happened. Probably getting the scratches on her cornea? Not really sure. Anyway, she gave us some steroid drops, but took a scraping of some of the cells off her eye to go in for testing just to be sure that's what it was. I just got the email from the vet and we are to start putting the drops in now. Hopefully this clears it up. *crosses fingers*
Our plan from there was to head back to Newport and see about staying at South Beach again and do more surfing for a few days. On our way there, we saw a large black dog running around the highway. It was going to get hit.... We pulled over and eventually caught it. It didn't have a collar, so we used some rope we had to create a make-shift lease. It was a huge sweetheart. Walked right next to whoever had the rope. We obviously couldn't bring it with us to a town so I went to the nearest house. It was a nice older lady that had 3 dogs. I asked her if she would be able to call animal control or something. She kindly got a collar and leash for it and said her granddaughter was stopping by soon and could probably bring it to Newport. So, hopefully it ends up with a good home, or even has a microchip in it so it can go back to its owner.
It was really warm in Corvallis and until right before we got into Newport. We crested a hill and dropped down into Newport and entered a fog. When we got to the campground, is was so packed! Apparently all the 'old timers' come out when the kids go back to school. There were no spots even close to the closer trail to the ocean. So, we would have had quite a walk with the boards in order to go surfing. Since it was foggy, I headed down to the beach to see if it was even surfable. It was so foggy, I could barely see into the water. So, definitely not very safe for surfing. Since it was supposed to rain for the next few days, we decided to just head out.
Not long after leaving, we noticed three bicyclists on the side of the road hitchhiking. Joe was like, really?!? So, he stopped. Turns out one of the guys' knee was bugging him. Joe didn't think all three bikes would fit, so we were just going to take the one guy to Yachats and they would meet him there. After getting the one bike in, he decided that maybe they could all fit. We ended up getting all three bikes and all three guys in there. We were going to head up a national forest road near Cape Perpetua, so we stopped there to drop them off. It was around 6pm and we had a lot of spaghetti and a jar of sauce that we've had since we started the trip. We could never open it since we can't refrigerate it. We offered them a spaghetti dinner which they seemed to greatly enjoy. It was fun to sit and chat with them a bit.
The road we took was mostly paved. It turns out that it connected up with the road we had taken up into that forest just a few days before. We were hoping to find a place where we had service. That didn't happen. By this time, the Verizon card stopped working for some reason. It would give me one error and Joe's computer a completely different error. Since we weren't having any luck with server, we wanted to go back to where we stayed the last time. By this time it was 10pm. Unfortunately, someone was already there. We went back up the hill, waited until it flattened out and stayed on the side of the road for the night.
Today, we headed into Florence and Joe spent a good 2 hours on the phone with Verizon trying to get it to work. We finally got it working again after having to do a bunch of crazy commands in the device... Apparently hooking it up to my computer with the Sprint SmartView program messed it up?? We're not quite sure, but we won't be using it on my computer again apparently.
We're now somewhere south of Dun City. I think we're on some timber company's land? We don't think it's national forest land, but it looks like it can be used by hunters and the public. We haven't decided if we're going to stay here tomorrow so we can let the cats out yet or not. We'll see.
-Miranda
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We were able to stay the weekend at the South Beach campground. Some days the surfing was pretty good, other days it was pretty rough. There was actually a competition on Sat. and Sun. and they were using the best area of the beach for it, but we still had fun. Joe's makeshift fin fix worked for the two days we needed it. We decided we would just head out on Sunday.
We aimed for the forest above Florence. We found a road that looked promising. It was gravel, then when it came to an intersection, it was paved... . . . We decided to go up the mountain, and it remained paved. Very bizarre. We found a neat hunter's site, unfortunately there was no internet. We stayed there the night so the cats could go out for the rest of that day and the next morning. They had been getting pretty ornery. This morning we left and found out that we apparently hit our limit for our roaming usage with our Sprint modem.. . . Considering everywhere but the towns seems to be roaming for us, that's kind of a problem. We may talk to Sprint to figure out our plan or even look into Verizon to see if it's better. Who knows.
While in Florence, we tried to call some vets that specialize in animal eyes. The first one wouldn't be available until possibly Friday. The second one works in both Corvallis and Eugene. We were already straight west of Eugene (the Newport vet had mentioned this veterinarian and we assumed she was in Eugene most of the time since it's the larger city). Unfortunately, when we called, we learned that she is only in Eugene on Friday!! We called the Corvallis office and got an appointment for Pickles tomorrow. That meant an 85 mile drive back north... Whoops. Hopefully this vet can help her and this can get taken care of.
Tonight we're just parked on the site of a street in Corvallis. It's a college town so we're doubting there will be any problems.
-Miranda
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We've gone out surfing each morning so far. Wednesday started out poorly, but definitely go better. Thursday it was just choppy and gross out there, so we both ended up getting a bit of a beating. Today it started out really nice and progressively got messier. I couldn't really get past the bigger waves to get out where it was quieter (where you sit and wait for waves) so instead of fighting it, I just kept catching ones closer to shore and practicing standing up, of which I'm still not good at.
Joe ended up catching a wave in the perfect spot apparently and was riding it sideways and everything. After that, his board kept spinning out from underneath him and he couldn't figure out why. He eventually noticed that his fin was missing... It completely busted off! If we ever doubted how vital the fin is, we definitely don't anymore.
We went into Newport to see about either getting a fin or seeing how long and how much to fix it. We figured it would be probably a week or more, which it turned out to be, but it's not very expensive. So, Joe just bought a cheap fin and is going to JB Weld it in. That will hopefully last until we head home and then someone at home can fix it.
We're here for the night, but don't know if they'll have a spot for us tomorrow night. We'll see.
-Miranda
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We went for a hike on Saturday. We biked down the hill to the first trail. The first time here, we biked all the way down to the end of the road and went on the hike there. This time we didn't go down as far because we remembered there was an earlier hike. We went on that one and it was a very nice hike. The views were gorgeous.
We left our comfy spot on Monday. It would have been nice to wait until Tuesday, but we were out of sink water and running very low on drinking water, so doing dishes was getting to be a huge pain. We drove through Newport to the South Beach State Park campground and got through Thursday night there.
We were able to go surfing yesterday some. It was a bit painful, but the waves were a nice size. Joe got beat up pretty bad just because it's been so long. Hopefully we'll get some more surfing in while we're here.
Today we decided to drive into town to run some errands. Pickles' eye still hasn't been looking good. We found a vet that was nice enough to stay a little late into her lunch to see us. She recommended seeing an ophthalmologist, but we would have to go in to Corvallis or Eugene to see them. The other option was to try out new antibiotic drops for a week to see if they help. So, that's what we're trying. If her eye still looks bad in a week, we'll try to find an ophthalmologist.
-Miranda
Curly always rides in my lap while driving. Lucy, if it's cold, often rides in Joe's lap. For some reason, she came up in my lap and lay down next to Curly. This has never happened before and she normally doesn't like to be by anyone else, especially not touching them. We decided it was because my lap was in the sun and Joe's wasn't. :D
Another decent photo of Zoe!
An amusing sign during our hike.
A gorgeous view.
The very neat forest in that area. The forest we were in was amazing to walk through. The needles basically don't allow anything but these tiny plants to grow underneath them.
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