An excellent opportunity came up for Kyle to go help out a good friend of ours finish up a job in North Dakota; and when you're unemployed, you'd just be silly to say no to making money. So he flew out last Saturday, and I've been flying solo in Coos Bay. But not to fret, I am really good at keeping myself entertained. :)
One of my neighbors in the RV park is from Coos Bay and he filled me in on all the secret spots that the locals like to go. So Monday I started checking them out.
The first place we checked out was called Horsfall Beach. Horsfall Beach is just north of Coos Bay and is on the very south end of the Oregon dunes. The Oregon Dunes stretch for about 40 miles along the coast from Coos Bay to Florence, and are very popular for recreational vehicle driving and camping, as well as some hiking. It wasn't a super nice weather day, so the water was a little rough and there were really only broken shells and sand dollars on the beach. I was lucky enough to find one intact sand dollar tho, that is bigger than any I've found yet.
The beach is lined by the dunes and sprinkled with huge pieces of driftwood though out, so there are lots of treasures for the puppies to look for, especially Buddy who has an undying love for sticks. We tried to play fetch with one of his treasures that he found, but of course Frank is a turd and kept trying to steal it. So for the sake of their teeth, we had to stop playing fetch. Trigger and Frank primarily concern themselves more with eating everything that they can find on the beach. Its like the worlds greatest candy store for the LBD's. Frank's favorite thing to eat is crab legs, and crab shells, and crab claws, really just anything crab. Trigger seems to absolutely love snacking on dead and alive sand crabs. These two are ridiculous.
Walking along the beach we came upon a sad sight though, there was a seal on the beach who was not doing well at all. He didn't seem at all concerned that we were there, and really wasn't moving much at all. You could hear that his breathing was very labored, he didn't even flench at the dogs and we really were only about 10 feet away from him, and them to him either. It was heartbreaking, but I didn't know what to do, it was an awful feeling to walk away. I did a brief amount of research and saw that they can live for days outside of the water, but I have no idea how long this poor fellow had been stranded.. I spoke with some other beach goers who has said they were calling the ODFW to report him.
The second adventure that I embarked upon was The Gold and Silver Falls, about an hour outside of Coos Bay up the Coos River. I left early in hopes of beating the crowds and the heat up there, and I am so happy that I did. To be able to see the sun rising over the mountains and hitting the huge river was absolutely stunning. Of course I have no pictures of this because I was driving, but trust me... It was marvelous!! The rivers here in Oregon are huge, I honestly have been amazed by how wide all of them are. And I find it fascinating how many draw bridges there are there too. Clearly there are a lot of really big boats that cruise up and down these rivers, although I have yet to see any in action.
The drive up was beautiful, but interesting. I know that roads in Colorado can be windy and seem a little treacherous, but at least there are shoulders on the roads there. The roads here are VERY curvy, and there is literally ZERO margin for error on most of these roads, there are no rumble strips to warn you because the edge of the road is seriously the yellow line, so you'd better be paying attention to what you are doing. It was thoughts like these that make me question what I am doing. Here I am in a strange place. Where I know no one. And I am embarking on these adventures by myself. I am NUTS. Not only is the road narrow, but some of these places I am driving into, I swear I hear the banjos from Deliverance playing in the trees, its awesome. Ha! At least the end result ends up being marvelous :)
Back to the Gold and Silver Falls, about an hour outside of Coos Bay up the river, you come to a parking area. Apparently back in January the road to the picnic area was permanently closed and only foot traffic is allowed past the parking area. So that means that it is about a 2.5 mile stroll along a stream, on a beautiful wood covered road. Perfect! That means that the pups will be nice and tired at the end of it. Plus there are areas along the road where you can actually get to the water and do a little exploring, which honestly just acts like a teaser to what is coming up the road.
At the picnic area, there is a little bit of info about the falls, and a directory of how to get to each of them. The first falls that we went to were the Silver Falls, to the left of the picnic area. According to the sign it would take about 15 minutes round trip to get to the falls. The trail used to be an old pack trail that was originally built back in 1901, and between 1912 to 1916, an auto stagecoach ran daily through here shuttling passengers between Allegany and Scottsburg. If you looked close enough you could see the old road, but I did not see anything. Mainly because I was not paying enough attention to what I was supposed to be looking for. After you round the last corner, you start to hear the waterfall, but in order to get up to it, you need to get over the giant tree that fell on the path. Luckily the dogs had no issues doing this, it was different story for me. I may have looked slightly like a baby giraffe trying to get over this log, but I made it. Plus it made for great photo ops. At one point Buddy was running down hill on the tree and hit a spot where the bark was missing and almost busted his butt, but managed to somehow sink his claws in well enough to be able to stop. I couldn't help but giggle at his expense, luckily he was just fine. The waterfall was absolutely beautiful. Totally worth the effort it took to get there.
The next fall was the upper part of the Golden Falls. This trail takes you up the side of a hill to get to the falls, and if you were to continue on the trail for a mile, you can walk out onto the top of this waterfall. Something that sounds like it would be amazing to see, but when you have three crazy labs running around, it just sounds dangerous. So we opted to just walk to the base of the falls and admire them from below. At one point I tried to set up my phone to take a picture of all of us, by placing it on a tree. Then after the third time of adjusting my phone I noticed that there were about a million millipedes on the tree and decided to just take a pic of the pups and call it good.
The last falls were another easy stroll along a creek and there was a great little swimming pot hole for the pups at the base of the falls. It wasn't as easy to get right up to this waterfall, because of the foliage and some massive boulders, but I was still able to get some great pictures. We ran into another person at this waterfall, that was trying to take some professional pictures, so we got out of there before we disturbed that serenity too much. We made it back to the picnic tables and started our 2.5 mile hike back to the truck. By the time that we reached the truck the dogs were toast. It made for a very mellow afternoon. They were so whooped from this hike that they pretty much refused to do anything the next day. So the next day was a movie day for us, it was fabulous. I have not had a lazy day like that in a long while.
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