Consider this post a sequel to yesterday’s post [1].  This morning, after I finished writing about my travels yesterday and getting ready, I headed out with my two traveling companions and one of them made it clear, albeit subtly so, that she did not want to eat breakfast at Shari’s, so off we went from Roseburg to the coast.  Needing gasoline, I stopped to get gas at Rice Hill, for a reasonable price, and shortly afterward exited I-5 to drive through the country.  Driving through Yoncalla we saw two horses getting ready to march down the main street (which we were on) and saw a few people setting up chairs to watch the parade that was soon to come.  I was struck by the fact that the two horse town was more memorable than I had thought, before we moved on to Drain, a town where the expensive gasoline (the second most expensive seen on the trip, aside from one station in Mollala near the end of today’s travels) made it seem likely to be a drain on the income of people and then off to the coast.

The drive along SR-34 to the coast was beautiful, with one awkwardly placed bit of bridge construction that made the traffic go down to one alternating lane of traffic, even though there were no animals to be seen.  I was impressed with the matter-of-fact name of geographical features, like Hardscrabble Creek and Elkton for a town with a lot of elk, to give two examples.  After reaching Reedsport and US-101 we turned north and drove along the coast, crossing a lot of river valleys with lovely bridges, eventually reaching Florence, where I took a detour upon seeing a sign for a military museum that was a short distance away from the main highway.  I arrived at the museum to find it closed, but as I was walking away the person inside, who had been cleaning up from festivities earlier this weekend, let me in and I looked around at the exhibits, noting the large amounts of items taken from enemies in warfare, especially during WWII and even a bit during the recent Iraq conflict.  I saw some books that looked interesting, but since the other two members of my party were outside, I did not want to linger too long.  By the time I had returned the two people I was with had wanted to see the dunes of Florence, so I drove to a few lookout places and I snapped photos of the dunes and we looked at them, which were quite beautiful.

After returning to the main highway we continued our way north, eventually reaching Newport.  I had received a recommendation to go to Nana’s Irish Pub in the Nye Beach area and I took that recommendation and it worked out well.  The pub gave great service, and the chicken pot pie with a side salad was excellent, even if I blushed a bit from the chardonnay used in the sauce.  We managed to spend a bit of time there, where I chatted, failed to read as much as I had wanted, and watched a lot of tennis.  We saw some good tennis, ending in darkness, and chatted about the incongruity of skinny people competing in eating contests, or any people for that matter, given the fact that hot dogs have a lot of nitrates and can be really tough to digest.  We had no such problems with our tasty lunch, thankfully.  After that stop, though, we were all pretty tired, and as my passengers napped periodically, I drove back via US-20 and SR-34 to I-5 northbound to Woodburn and then back to our destination through Mollala.  With that, the trip was done, and had been quite an enjoyable one.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/07/04/a-trip-to-crater-lake/